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Since ive been in Australia ive not had time to write a travel blog because the internet cafes cost so damn much over here so ill try to give you a quick summery of what ive been up to.
So as you probably know that the weather over here hasnt been too good, what with the worst floods in memory and the strongest cyclone in history hitting the cost, our plans were affected a little (and for this reason the first 2 weeks were pretty dull).
Week 1
This week I spent in and around sydney. After Thailand it came as a massive shock how bloody expensive everything was over here. For the first few days we didnt really do too much, although I did meet up with Auntie Sue on Australia Day which was pretty good. We ended up missing the fireworks that evening as we assumed they were going to be at the harbour bridge, but they werent. After a couple of days dossing around sydney I decided I had had enough of walking around shops and went out to Macarther and met up with Auntie Sue, Marc and Craig for dinner which was good because I hadent seen them all together for ages! After that I returned to Sydney to catch a bus upto Byron Beach.
Week 2
We started off the week having surf lessons in Byron. We all got hideously burnt in the sun (that'll teach us). I was naturally a pro at surfing, standing up on my 3rd attempt. I did help that the boards were about 11ft long but we can over look that small fact. So after my skills were honed in Byron, we headed up the coast to Surfers Paradise. That night Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Yazi hit. Great. So instead of heading up the coast after a couple of days here, we ended up staying for a week....which was boring. We did pretty much nothing all week except for wander around the shops AGAIN (we couldnt go to the beach because we were all still burnt from Byron), except for one day we met up with a girl we went to uni with, who is now living out here, and we headed to a water park called Wet and Wild. This was a pretty immese day out to be honest.
Week 3ish
So after the near bordem of Surfers Paradise, we decided to risk it and head up to Brisbane (where the floods had hit a month before). According to the news I had been watching the whole city had been wiped out, although the only damage that I could see was some brown line on the trees and some of the buildings smelt a bit like moldy cat piss. The first day I explored the city, checked out the botanical gardens and headed to the XXXX brewery for a little tour around and a few beers adn a bbq. It was pretty good and the beers and bbq definalty made it worth while. The day after this we attempted to do a Skydive (we were going to do it in Mission Beach up the cost, but the whole town had been distroyed by the cyclone and all the sand had been sucked off the beach). I say that we attempted to do a skydive as, although we got picked up at 6AM, we had to wait arounf to 2pm until we were told that the weather was not good enough to do it. Fantastic. Day 3 in Brisbane, Amy and I decided to hire some bikes and follow the 1 of the cycle routes around the city. Dispite the fact that it was about 35degrees and we almost melted, this turned out to be one of the best days so far. We cycled to the University of Queensland campus (which was MASSIVE) where these passers by gave us some bread and told us to start feeding the ducks and see what happened. So out of pure curisoty we did and after a couple of minutes loads of these little terapins started swimming over and they would take the bread right out of your hand. Shortly after the terapins literally hundreds of eels started appearing all around us. I tried feeding them out of my hand and got a lovely bite from one of them. We thought there couldnt be anything else under there when suddenly a Water Dragon came out of nowhere and started nabbing all the bread. You wouldnt get that at NineSprings! After this day of wildlife we headed up to Australia Zoo, which was as good as all the hype suggests. There was so many amazing animals there that we almost missed our bus when it was time to leave. It would take ages to list them all but my favourite were the Asian Otters which literally DID NOT STOP MOVING! Trying to take a photo of them was pretty difficult. It was a good day out.
Week 4 - 5
From Australia Zoo I headed straight up to Noosa, and the Gagaju bush camp. This was awesome. It was basically a camp site in the middle of a nature researve where we stayed for 3 days and kayaked up and down the river. I managed to survive the whole 3 nights but the girls left after the 2nd. I think all the camping, spiders and toads got too much for them. I spent the whole time with these 5 Danish guys who were pretty good fun and they had some very interesting names, like Jeppa (pronounced Yurp-pa). After I returned from the bush camp we headed up to Rainbow Beach which was supposed to have 72 different colours of sands on the beach, which im sure it would have done if it wasnt pissing it down with rain the whole time. No matter we were only there for one day before heading to Hervey Bay, where we began the nest trip of down under so far: the 3 day 4x4 tag along safari on Fraser Island. It was incredable. This is a place where 4x4s were designed for and were definatly needed. I had a couple of drives in the car, the first though the centre of the Island on the rough tracks and the second a 1hour sprint down the beach. I LOVED IT! In the evenings we got pretty smashed on Goon (a 4lt box of wine) which is the only way anybody can afford to get drunk over here. It was pretty funny walking around in the evenings as, if you were on your own, you would activly get hunted by the packs of Dingos on the island. So every couple of minutes you had to look behind you to see if any were sneeking up on you. Proper Bush as the aussies would say. On Fraser Island was where I lost my fist pair of glasses for the trip. 1 down, 1 to go. Ut oh! After Fraser Island, Amy and I went to the Myella farm stay for 2 days. It was soooooo much fun. I rode 2 horses, one called Lightning and the other called Spinefex (who was an ex rodeo horse), we went horse rustelling on motorbikes rounding up the horses, on horse back we rounded up some cattle, I drank milk directly from a cows udder, I attempted to learn how to crack a whip (which I could not do), I mastered the lasso though. Im sure Ive forgotten something but it was a hectic 2 days.
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