Hello everyone, thought I'd do an update seeing how I havent done one is like two months!

Anyway, so I've been in Australia for the past month and a half and am now in Airlie Beach which is where you are to go off on the Whitsunday Islands yacht sailing. So I flew into Sydney way back on the 1st May where I spent a couple of days with a mate that I met in Nepal before heading off to visit some friends from England who now live in Coffs Harbour. Whilst in Coffs I went to see a sub tropical rainforest, see some of the coast and chill out for a few days which was nice. After a couple of days rest in Coffs I headed back to Sydney to meet up with some of the people I'd met in Asia on my Intrepid tour. As we were all in Sydney at the same time we'd decided to travel the east coast together on the Oz Experience bus. So we all stayed in Sydney for an extra week waiting for some stragglers to turn up before we could all depart on the bus, and it was decided to stay in an area of Sydney called Kings Cross and its just as bad as the place in London! We were staying in a hostel right next door to a crack den and there was this one guy who came out 3 times a day for a ciggy in the street and he would do lots of crazy stuff like shouting at no-one, jumping around in the air and other crack induced craziness, so generally you crossed to the other side of the street when you saw him around. Besides that, Kings Cross was a pretty cool place for backpackers, the hostels where quite cheap and there were loads of bars that we could get into for free and get free drinks and such.

Anyway, once the rest of the group had arrived we left on the bus headed for Byron Bay. Our first port of call was a place we stayed at overnight called Surf Camp where we got a free surf lesson. Everyone on the bus had to stop and we were lucky to be with an awesome driver and cool people on the bus. The lesson started at 7am the next morning, but once you got into the water you didnt even feel remotely tired. It was great fun and we all managed to get up on the board a couple of times which was cool. I've got some pics but they are on a cd, so when I remember to bring that to an internet cafe I'll upload those on facebook as well. Anywhoo, we left later that day at 11am to head to Byron Bay where we stayed in a hostel opposite the legendary Cheeky Monkey's Bar where you wont find a single Australian person inside haha. Its the hotspot for all backpackers to go for a night out and cheap food, where you can get a meal for $2 or $5. You can also get loads of free drinks by shouting as loud as you can, doing a free raffle etc and then once everyones considerably wasted enough, you head onto the tables to dance.

So we stayed in Byron for 6 days and I think it rained for 5.5 of them which kind of sucked but there wasnt much we could do about that. So we spent a lot of time walking round town, seeing the beach, watching surfers and booking all our excursions for up the coast later on in the trip. When we finally left Byron we were headed to a place called Surfers Paradise which we had heard was a bit of a hole. Anyway, it pretty much lived up to its expectations and I found it pretty dingy in all. We signed up for this party thing on the street one night through a company called Plan B and it was a pretty strange evening to be honest. It cost us $20 and included free entry to 5 clubs and free drinks at all these places and drinking games and what not, however, it all kicked off at 5.15pm so by 8.30 everyone was absolutely off their faces and by the time we came to leave the last club at 1.30am I got us lost for 30mins before we found our way back to our hostel/prison. The place we were staying at was really cheap, but it soon became obvious why. Whilst the actual hostel was pretty nice, it wasnt really much of a backpacker place because a) no alcohol was allowed to be consumed on the premises and if caught you would be evicted, b) if you left your door to the room open you would be evicted, c) people not staying at the hostel were not allowed on site at any time. And there were loads of other stupid rules that just didnt make it a very fun place to stay and at any point they could decide to evict you!

So we shortly left Surfers and headed to Brisbane where I decided to stay with another friend I met in Nepal to catch up with eacher other and save a bit of cash as well. Brisbane wasnt quite as good as Sydney and we didnt do much there besides visit the Koala Sanctuary one day before moving on to a place called Noosa. Now Noosa was an amazing place and we all would have like to stay for longer but we had to get to Hervey Bay in time for Fraser Island so we only had one night there. But if I could, I would definitely go back. It was quite chilled out there, but the beaches were amazing and the accomodation and people were fantastic so we all loved it for the one night there.


ARRGGHH. For some reason the last hour I spent doing the second half of this blog didnt upload so that annoyed me no end.


Anyway, so after we left Noosa we headed off to Hervey Bay for one night before starting our Fraser Island tour. There wasnt a whole lot to do in Hervey Bay, so we just had a walk around town, got some lunch and then did a liquor run to the local off licence for all our alcoholic needs for Fraser. The next day we had to get up at 6am for our briefing and safety instructions and then on to collect our cars from the garage. We also met the rest of our group who would be with us in the car for the next 3 days. So ,ater that morning I was assigned the designated driver for the group so I had to drive all 11 of us down to Woolworths to get our food and water for our trip, the car alone is a mammoth so it was unbelievably heavy with 11 people, food, tents and bags in it as well. After finishing our shopping we headed off to the barge to catch the ferry to start our tour. Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island and areas of the island have sand so pure (98% silica) that it is shipped around the world to 5* resorts, most notably by Hawaii. Anyway, the first place we stopped at was called Lake Wabby and is famous for its steep hill that ends in a freshwater lake. We had a great time there for a couple of hours, thinking of varying ways of getting into the lake off the hill, probably the most fun was doing somersaults down it into the water. After spending a couple of hours there, we headed back to the car and drove to our campsite for the evening. It got dark pretty quickly so by the time we had got to the campsite there wasnt much light left, add to the fact that we just started drinking as well and things moved at a pretty slow pace. But we had bought a load of burgers, sausages and rolls and we all tucked in to an eagerly anticipated dinner later on.

The next day we did a lot of driving, going to a point on the island called Indian Head where you can sometimes see whales migrating along the coast, but we didnt get to see any unfortunately. After that we drove to another site called Eli Creek where you can float for about 15 minutes down a slow moving river into the sea, which was pretty cool and relaxing. After that, we had to head back to our campsite again to make sure we had plenty of time to set up our tents and cook dinner. We had all had a great time that night as the full moon was out and the sky was a blanket of stars. We played drinking games, jumped off sand cliffs into big piles of sand, got wet and got very cold as the heat left the air. The next day we all woke feeling pretty rough, but determined to make the most of the last day on the island, so we set off early to a place called Lake Mackenzie which is famed for its pure silica sands that are imported all over the world. The sand there really is amazing and feels like silk on your body, also the lake is stunning with its clear blue water. After spending most of the day there we had to return to the barge to make our way back to the mainland where we returned all our equipment and car and headed out for a group dinner at a local bar, after which we all promptly fell alseep!

The next day we said goodbye to Hervey Bay and headed off to a place called Kroombit where we would be able to experience authentic life on an outback cattle station. Or so they said. I guess most cattle stations in Australia have fancy dress shops, a bar and a mechanical bull. Besides the tacky tourist, "we want your money" attitude supplied, the activities were pretty cool. We all got to ride horses to herd sheep, we learnt how to crack a whip and we also worked in small groups to capture a goat, 'brand it' and get back into a cage. That was all pretty fun, but it was quite expensive and some of the people who were also there were idiots and a lot of us on the bus didnt get on with them.

And so early next day at 6am we set off on the bus again to Airlie Beach, covering a distance of 800km over 11.5 hours, so that was great fun! So as you can imagine, we didnt really do much that day. The next day we had to go check onto our boat the 'Pegasus' and we set off late in the afternoon at 4pm to sail around the Whitsunday Islands. There were 24 passengers on the boat and of that number 19 were men, which left many of us wondering if we'd somehow stumbled onto a gay cruise, but it was a good couple of days anyway. It was a little dissapointing that we didnt get to see more of the Whitsunday Islands as we only actually went to one island (Whitsunday Island) out of the possible 74 to choose from. But... we did go to a number of bays for snorkelling and diving which was pretty cool. On one of the days we went to this cool bay which was part of the great barrier fringe reef so we got to snorkel with this amazing coral and loads of tropical fish that you could reach out and touch if you wanted to. Included in the price we paid for our tour, we got a free introductory scuba dive lesson which lasted 15 minutes and introduced you to the apparatus and got you breathing underwater in knee deep shallow water. I enjoyed just doing that as it was pretty cool even though I didnt go anywhere or see anything, they also offered a 25 minute dive for $60, but that was too expensive so I flexed my bargaining skills and got the guy down to $40 so then we all headed off on a short dive around the area. We didnt go deeper than 10m but it was amazing nonetheless. It was just like flying, you could just float in the water without sinking or rising and to go up or down you had to propel yourself in that direction. Awesome. We went through some amazing coral reefs and saw loads of fish swimming everywhere, at one point there was this amazing part where the coral formed like a cave and you were swimming through this glowing multi coloured cave made out of living organisms, with fish quite happily swimming around you. If I had the money, I would in an instant go get my PADI course done now, but I dont have $300 spare, so maybe next year...

Without a doubt the scuba dive was the highlight of the Whitsunday experience and probably one of my highlights of my trip to date. The next day we did some more snorkelling in a different bay before heading back to Airlie Beach for dinner and some drinks before bead. Which brings me up to date so far, I'm currently staying in Airlie Beach for a few days before heading on to Mission Beach to do a days white water rafting and then I'm off to Cairns where my east coast tour of Australia will be finished!

The next time I'll do an update will probably be when I've left Cairns, around the 23rd, so till then amigos!