Day 1 of the connections tour (in a big brother stylie) 7am start from the wake up hostel in sydney starting our trip to byron bay, roughly 800km. drove over sydney harbour bridge on our way out. we all made a quick introduction of ourselves on the microphone. prime time for the AA meeting joke. we stopped for lunch at telegraph post, a lovely lake where we sat and ate sandwiches, bloody hell its hot. amazing how many fish are in the lake. the toilets by the lake were worse than glastonbury, effectively a big hole in the ground in a tin shed with baking heat warming the place up to uncomfortable levels. As we travelled on we were introduced to some of australia's famous "big things", something that represents a towns main source of income. first of was a model of a giant banana - voted the most bizarre & disgusting tourist attraction in the world 1995. this was closely followed by a giant koala and a giant Prawn, the freakiest thing you would ever see. We then stopped at a koala sanctury, we saw emu's, fuzzy nosed wombats (coolest creatures on earth, plod along for a bit fall over lie on their back and eat a bit), roo's, deer and loads of bloody flies. They allowed us to hold the koala's for a small fee of course, so there is a nice picture of me cuddling a baby koala. i was fortunate some of the others were subjected to koala poo. really dosile creatures that sleep 20 hours a day due to the lack of enery in euculiptus leaves that they eat. We got to byron bay around 6 in the evening and enjoyed a traditional aussie barbie. the accomodation was much better than expected a nice cabin on a caravan park, reminded my of old skool holidays as a kid. i shared a room with thomas - german and manfred - austrian. great guys but not so sure about thier continental swimwear, for which they got loads of stick from. the whole tour, around 25 at this time although more join later, them went out into the town, crossing a railway track on the way, never saw a train though. beach hotel. a nice big bar with a live band huge outdoor terrace, full of "surf dude's". of course i got to work at getting drunk ensuring i was last to leave. my status is set. well thats day 1 over