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Sorry about the length of this blog guys but we had a lot to catch up on....
Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island (18th - 20th December)
We arrived in Rainbow Beach cream crackered after our 15 hour night bus, where we had pretty much no sleep. We checked into our hostel, then decided to check out Rainbow Beach, which took about 3 minutes as it is tiny - basically one street with a beach at the end.
We hung about on the beach most of the day but decided to call it a very early night as our tiredness really began to kick in after dinner. We ended up going to bed about 8pm - rock and roll!! However we didn't realise that Sunday night in our hostel was "Sunday Night Sesh", which was basically party night where a live band played to start with, then a dj, with the party going on until the early morning! We were constantly kept awake by the antics and were tempted just to join them as the tunes were so good, but had no energy to drag ourselves out of bed.
We got up at 8am the next day and spent 2 days and 1 night on Fraser Island. Again we were really lucky to go on another brilliant trip with another brilliant group of people, especially considering we booked the trip at Airlie Beach when we were super hungover and had no idea what we had actually booked!
We were in a 4x4 air conditioned bus with a very Aussie, very knowledgeable guide called Ian, rather than going in our own 4x4 jeep as a lot of people do. I'm glad really as people die every year by being swept out to sea in their cars. Mind you we nearly didn't make it back, but I'll tell you about that later!
So we got the ferry over to Fraser Island, which is the largest sand island on Earth, and set off up the 75 mile beach whilst having the scariest introductory talk I have ever heard, including facts about Fraser Island being home to:
6 species of shark
7348 species of insect including 64 species of spider
26 species of snake, of which 25 will kill you
Dingoes, which have attacked 38 people this year, with some of the attacks being fatal!
Nothing to worry about on Fraser Island then!!
The first place we stopped off at was a huge shipwreck called The Mohino. The majority of the ship is buried under the sand but even from what was sticking out you could tell it was massive. We won't bore you with all the facts but if anyone is interested in history I would look the ship up as it had quite an interesting past.
After taking photos and having a photo stop (boys to the bush on the right, girls to the bush on the left) we got back into the bus and headed towards Indian Head. We climbed up loads of rocks to the top of Indian Head (which was a sacred Aboriginal place on the island until all the Aborigines were murdered on Black Christmas), and had amazing views all over the island.
Lunch consisted of a roll as big as your face! Once we had eaten we piled back into the bus and drove to Eli Creek, climbed up a big walkway at the top of the creek and floated back down. At least we tried to - our asses were obviously too big as we kept grounding ourselves!
That evening we stayed in these cabins that are usually student accommodation for marine biologists, and they were the most comfortable beds we have slept in all trip. We were spoilt with so much food including a massive steak (yum yum!!) and sat up until about 12:30ish with a couple we met called - Carly and Ben, drinking goon (again). A few people headed to the beach but after hearing how a 21 year old lad had recently been decapitated by a dingo we decided to give it a miss!
In the morning Ian drove us to Central Point and we went for an hours walk in the rainforest, which was awesome. Luckily the scariest thing we saw was a lizard, but we did see the burrows of the biggest spider in the world - the Olios Giganteus, which can grow to a span of 3.5 metres. Thank God they only come out at night - seeing the size of the holes they dig is scary enough!
Straight after that we drove up to Lake Mackenzie which is a huge freshwater lake, but seems just like a beach. The water is so clear and the sand so white. As the water is naturally infused with something like 9% tea tree oil Ian told us to scrub ourselves with the sand and then rinse off in the water in his 5 step beauty regime:
1. Hair
2. Face
3. Body and Bits
4. Teeth (yuck!)
5. Jewellery
We got some strange looks but it seemed to work!
After lunch we had 2 hours to get to the ferry. All was going well until Ian tried to get up the inland path we needed to get home. After 3 attempts it became clear it was never gonna happen, so we had to race across the sand to get to the ferry before the time came in.
For a lot of the time we were able to drive on the wetter, harder sand, but at one point we were forced onto the softer sand, and got pretty much stuck. The bus was juddering all over the place without really moving. We knew it was serious, as Ian, who never shut up the whole time he was driving us, was completely silent.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when he managed to get the bus moving again, but by this time the tide had come really far in and our wheels were in the water the rest of the way. At one point it got so deep that we drove over a fallen tree.
We could see the ferry in front of us but the tide was in so far and the bus going so slowly that you could feel it being pulled by the current. No-one was talking and you could tell that everyone was waiting for Ian to tell us to abandon bus!
We eventually made it onto the ferry, to find out the back tyre was completely flat! The ferry staff were all saying that we were lucky Ian was our driver, as with anyone else we would have been dragged out to sea. Phew!
When we got back that night we went for a walk with some of the guys from our hostel to Carlo Sandblow, which was like a massive hill made of sand with lush views. We tried boomerang throwing (Hickey was good, Lorry's landed literally right in front of her feet) and Hickey had a go at sandboarding down a really steep hill. We saw the sunset and tried to get some pictures of us holding the sun. It was most good :o)
Brisbane (21st - 22nd December)
When arrived in Brisbane mid afternoon and headed straight out to the centre as we knew time was of the essence. We walked along the river bank and saw the Brisbane eye and the man made beach. We then got all Christmassy and went to see the Christmas parade through the town centre, it was really good and even included 3 wise men on actual camels!! As we had to be up at 7am to go to Australia Zoo we had an early night.
The next day we awoke hangover free and headed to the zoo, it was a 45 minute coach journey, nothing compared to some of the treks we have had! Now I can't believe we are writing this but Crikey we were both disappointed by Australia Zoo. Highlights were the croc and bird show, feeding the elephants and seeing the Steve Irwin shrine but other than that we both preferred Paignton zoo! We ended up having to kill time as we saw everything, it was still a good day and we ended up spending it with an Aussie we got chatting to on the coach called Aaron.
When we got back to Brisbane we grabbed a bite to eat and then met Aaron for a drink, we had to be up at 6.30am to get the coach to Byron Bay (5 hour journey) so again we called it an early night. Damn early morning starts! We didn't get to see much of Brisbane but what we did see we thought was pretty cool.
Byron Bay 23rd - 24th December
Gutted! Why because we only got to spend 1 night in Byron Bay. We both said it was the best place we had visited so far, Lorry summed it up brilliantly by saying "If I was a place I would be Byron Bay". It's a very colourful, hippy place with great shops, loads of unique artists and street performers playing wired and wonderful things and the place was buzzing as loads of Aussies got to Byron Bay for their Christmas holidays.
As we only had 1 night we planned to make the most of it. We looked around the shops and bough some bracelets to get in with the hippy crowd, we chilled on the beach for a bit and Hickey tried sushi for the first time and loved it. Our hostel (which turned out to be an apartment …sweet) was going an all you can eat BBQ for $10 so we got amongst that, we stopped off at the bottle stop to by a box of goon first though. Now you have probably noticed we have been drinking lots of goon, the reason for this is a box (about 5 ½ bottles of wine) costs the equivalent of 6 quid! Where 6 bottles of beer would cost about 10 quid, so now you know why we have been drinking goon!
Anyhoo we had the BBQ and Hickey piled his plate up to the max, we have photographic evidence of this! We got chatting to a Dutch couple in their 50's who had decided to go travelling, they were hilarious, after a few hours we switched to the you're crowd and learnt a new drinking game, it involves a pack of cards and ALOT of drinking. We had pretty much drank a whole box of goon so decided to head to the club opposite called Cheeky Monkeys however Lorry was far too drunk so we couldn't get in, we tried another club and got into that, only to be chucked out after 10 minutes (Lorry again!). Not giving up we went back to Cheeky Monkeys and this time they said we could come in if we had our passports so Hickey ran back and got them only to get back to the club and be told we couldn't get in as we were turned away earlier..damn it! We were on a mission now so went back to the club we had just got chucked out of, now a side effect of goon is it effects your memory so when the bouncer didn't let us in because he had chucked us out 10 minuted before Lorry claimed she had not been in the club and genuinely believed she hadn't been in there. It was hilarious, in the end we have up and went back to the hostel. 2 of the Canadians we were staying with were still up so we drank with them for a bit and headed to bed at no idea what time it was o'clock.
We were getting picked up at 9am for our airport transfer however forgot to put our clocks forward an hour as we had travelled through a time zone. Luckily we both woke up in time to realise this otherwise we may have ended up missing our flight to Melbourne! The journey to Melbourne wasn't great, Lorry was sick before the flight, on the flight, after the flight, whilst Christmas shopping in Melbourne! She had a Mc Donalds and thank god she felt better. Last minute Christmas shopping in boiling hot weather in a packed city centre with hangovers….not recommended! It was so busy there were even queues to say the Christmas decorations in a shop window! Mental! We finally made it back to Lucy and Bruce's and chilled out in anticipation of Christmas Day.
Christmas Period 25th - 28th December
We were woken at 5am by thunder and lightening which we did not expect on Christmas Day in Australia! Little did we know worst was to come! We got up at 9am and had brekkie before opening our pressies Lucy and Bruce got us, amongst other things Hickey got 24 bottles of Melbourne bitter and Lorry got some pink flip flops and a pink bracelet, we also both got Harribos in our stocking.
After presents we helped prepare Christmas lunch, 5 different salads with oysters and on the BBQ we had prawns and calamari, not a traditional Christmas lunch but it was bloody lush! We also had 3 homemade pudding, Christmas cake, pudding and trifle. YUMMERS!
It was warm however we both persisted with wearing our Santa hats all day. At about 5pm the weather took a turn and we witnessed the craziest storm we had ever seen. Lashing rain, thunderous thunder, blazing winds and the lightening, well it was amazing. In some parts of Melbourne they also had hailstones the size of cricket balls! This went on for a good 3 hours, it literally was like having 4 seasons in 1 day. When it finally calmed down we went to the phone box to make some calls to family, this is where we encountered the man who wouldn't shut up. We literally only walked round the corner and Hickey asked a guy where the nearest phone box was, he said not to worry and invited us into his Salon to use his phone, we obliged but couldn't get through so said we were going to leave, he gave us some chocolates but then decided to start chatting to us as we were leaving. 20 - 30 minutes later he was still chatting, we couldn't get away as he reeled off story after story, and by god these stories were getting more and more ridiculous, we won't go into details but his stories included him being dead for 10 seconds, Cliff Richard, prostitutes, endless amounts of cocaine and the lead singer from Hot Chocolate! You just couldn't make it up! Anyhoo we finally managed to get away (our chocolate had melted by this time) got back to Lucy and Bruce's and they said only us could walk round the corner and end up coming back with a story like that! We watched little shop of horrors and went to bed!
Boxing day we went to Lucy Mums for Geoffrey's birthday, again we were treated to more amazing food and a cheese platter to die for! We decided we would attempt the Boxing Day sales at a place called Chadstone (a shopping centre the size of Swindon!). It was a bad decision as even though we left it till about 5pm it was absolutely rammed. Hickey did pick up a pair of espradilles for $5 dollar though so he was happy with that. We chilled out the rest of the night and decided we would go to see Lucy's Dad the next day at his home in Venus Bay about a 2 hour drive south of Melbourne.
We arrived at Venus Bay and headed straight to the beach, which was a 5-minute walk from the house. Bruce went out surfing and Hickey went with him and tried Body Boarding which he loved, although he got whacked about by the waves quite a lot!
Lucy Dad's house is huge, it the prefect holiday home and even better at 5pm he calls happy hour and cracks open the alcohol! We had some homemade pizza and then went to go and see some Kangaroos out in the wild which was cool.
The next day we headed straight down to the beach to dig for some Pippies (like mussels), we spent a couple of hours on the beach and in the sea digging for them and ended up coming back to the house with nearly 2 litres worth. We then cooked them up with some pasta and had a lush lunch. We headed back to Melbourne but not before stopping at the most amazing crazy golf ever. It was pirate themed and had the most incredible holes, hard to explain but imagine playing a real life Mousetrap or screwball scramble (if you remember those games). Anyway is was great and Hickey won so he was even more chuffed! Back in Melbourne ready for New Years Eve where we are having A Hero's and Villains fancy dress party. Happy New Year to you all xx
- comments
jan hickey Brilliant, your blogs never fail to make me laugh, your both looking really well. Can't wait til the next update. Mum xxx
Liz Sounds amazing. We're thinking about you both lots!! Hope to Skype whilst you're still with Lucie and Brucie. Take care, Merry Christmas and lots of love from us both xxx
Dad and Sue Fantastic blog,sounds amazing. Happy New Year to you.xxx
Teresa Gill hi to you both - have a brilliant new year and a great 2012. looking forward to hearing all the up to date news. lots of love, mum and dad xx
Hannah Hello my beauties, only just got round to reading this! I know, i'm naughty. I absolutely love your crazy stories, especially the man chatting about Cliff Richard and Hot Chocolate :) Just about to check out your pics too. Sounds like a very different but lush Christmas you had, salad and oysters, are you crazy??? x