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So Tuesday we start early, woken by Matts attempt at being a ‘security guard’ trying to scare us off. It didn’t work but it was a good excuse to get up out of the pit. We had a cold shower, freezing cold, I even washed my hair in it, at the beach front and some brekky before bidding our farewells and heading to Tin Can Bay where you can feed dolphins in the morning. Of course, by the time we got there, they had had their munch and gone. Typical. We decided that it was time to move on and so headed off towards Noosa. This was meant to be the hippy capital and it was brilliant. The beach was a real surfer’s beach. We walked about for a bit before trying to find a reasonable campsite for the night. We were pretty tired today so camped up early, chilled out and watched films in bed. We could spend days in Noosa, but we don’t have days, we have 2 weeks to get over 1200km to Sydney for Crimbo. Tonight, whilst trying to discretely get up for a midnight wee, I fell out of the camper and grazed my knee. Although I screamed, Tom didn’t stir. I ventured to the loo on my tod, it took me 10 minutes to pluck up the courage, what a girl.
Wednesday, hot shower and off on down the Gold Coast. We stopped at a few beaches on the way down which again were brilliant surfing beaches, although still covered in stingers. We were planning to visit Australia Zoo tomorrow so in the area there were a lot of memorials to him, such as a statue at the beach and the highway named after him. I was brought a new hat today and on the way to the camp, Tom warned me not to lose it...It was 5 minutes before I screamed, ‘I’ve lost my hat’ because it was sucked out of the window when there was a gust of wind, oops. Tom pulled over on the highway and I sprinted back after it giggling all of the way. I now am not allowed to wear my hat with the window down. Today was pretty uneventful, tonight however.....Well, we arrived at our free camp for the night which was a rest area just off Steve Irwin highway. We Set up shop, got our bbq out and a beer ready for a nice night. After visiting the ladies and being scared off by a giant spider, we retreated to the van. We were soon visited by Warren, our friendly neighbour, who proceeded to talk to us for about 20 minutes. This isn’t unusual as Aussies have a reputation for talking, a lot. He went after the 6th time of saying that he must go but soon returned with pictures of his recent trip to the Himalayas, in the knowledge that we would be going there next year. We enjoyed chatting to him about it and soon got onto the subject of walking boots. After his 2nd attempt to leave, he soon returned with his walking boots, socks and gaiters and talked us through the set up. By this point we were ready to bbq and had already agreed we would offer him a sausage and a glass of wine. Soon enough Warren asked if he could bring his chair over, we said ‘yeah of course’. We carried on chatting for an hour before he ran out of wine, so he asked whether he could bring his box of wine over, we again said ‘of course’. He returned with his box of wine and his solar power shower to show us, very interesting. It was only when we ourselves ran out of wine that we discovered why Warren seemed to be disintegrating before our eyes, he offered us some wine, we agreed and soon discovered that it was actually mugs of Port that he was drinking. Soon enough Warren started to slur so much we couldn’t understand him and it seemed he didn’t understand us. The evening became a bit tense so much so that Tom and I did the team yawn and ‘oh my we have an early start, I think I’m going to make the bed then I’m going to have to go bed’. When I said this, Warren thought I was trying to confuse him. Warren was basically p*ssed as a fart and couldn’t keep his eyes open. We kindly asked whether he wanted us to take him and his things back to his van. Tom started to carry his things for him, when he returned Warren asked Tom if he would like him to attack him. Tom declined for the safety of our Warren who was such a crap drunk. Tom could have gently poked him in the chest and he wouldn’t have stood up till the morning. After 30 minutes we managed to get rid of him. We locked the doors and made spy holes in the curtains to watch him. He seemed to struggle but after a while fell into his van and asleep. Phew.
Thursday we got up bright and early and went straight to the zoo, 2 hours before it opened. 1) to escape Warren and 2) to have brekky and make a picnic for the day. Once it opened, loads of people flooded in. We were lucky as someone had given us a voucher in the car park which gave us adult tickets for kids prices, very lucky. The zoo was brilliant, we spent the whole day and did all of the shows. The Crocodile Hunter museum was sad, it was a great memorial to Steve and had a lot of things, like poems and letters that had been sent to his family when he died. I got to feed and elephant and Tom got to feed a piglet and a goat! Tom tried to feed the baby ones and got asked not to as it wasn’t the right food, the sign was right next to him. Ooops.. We watched the otters for hours in their pool, go round and round and down and swirl, bit mesmerised by them. There were a few too many Bindi products in the shop and almost over the top with trying to sell her but the messages that they had were good. Their philosophy was that everyone should touch the animals because then you will learn to love them and when you love something you want to protect them. It helped us when we had the whole ‘are zoos good or bad’ thoughts. On the way out of the zoo we were told that there had been an accident so we had to make a de tour. WE camped tonight in a truck stop and ate chicken legs which took hours to cook and noodles. Hmmm. I have developed an unhealthy obsession with noodles, tom yum thai noodles. Yum. Looking forward to South east Asia!
Friday, up early to make a phone call back to my Mum. We both had to shower in the men’s toilet, because it was the only one, at least it was hot. Mum and I arranged yesterday for me to call today, but surprisingly she wasn’t online. After texting twice, I worried and called. The dozy one had thought I meant the other yesterday, i.e. tomorrow! And because of this, we had to have a McDonalds breakfast, because we were using their wifi. It was tragic!!! We got on the road and carried on down to Surfers Paradise Mannnnnnn. It was a cloudy day and so we stopped on the beach for a bit and had a mooch round the town. We had to get a powered site tonight so stayed out of town stopping only for a goon of $6 dollar wine, yes $6 dollars for 4 litres of wine. Wine is our new beer because it is soooo cheap here. We had a thai green curry and did our chores before settling in front of the laptop for a film.
Saturday, a rush back to a McDonalds...who’s wifi didn’t work. Another drive to another McDonalds, there are loads here, so we could call home. Had a chat with Mum, Grandma and Aunty Pat & Sue which was really nice especially with the web cam. We sat on Surfers paradise for a while and watched the surfers then once done did the ‘seen it, happy?’ and off on down to Byron Bay. Surfers Paradise was nice but pretty built up and a bit like a Spanish resort, we had heard that Byron was more natural so off we went. Once in Byron we again had a look around. There was no where to camp here so we were going to have to camp on the road. Tonight we were going to go out as it was Saturday night so we found somewhere to camp, had a snooze and a glass of wine, washed with baby wipes and got ready for dinner and a few alcoholic beverages. We trawled the streets for somewhere nice to eat, it always takes us yonks but in the end found an Indian which always goes down well, also we could bring our own drink so we went back to the van and brought our goon of wine. Very sophisticated! The waitress was from the UK and warned us that Aussie spice was nothing in our terms so we both went for hot hot hotttttt. And it was. But it was very nice. After our dinner we went back to a bar we had been in earlier for a JD & Coke (Tom did, I was nearly asleep on my feet) and then soon went back to our roadside camp for sleep. I don’t know if it is the sea air or if we are getting extremely lazy but we sleep a lot, we did get up at 6am though I guess!
Sunday was a little hung over. I couldn’t wake up so Tom drove with me still in bed down to the sea front so we were near toilets and the beach. The sound of the sea sent me even further into sleep land and I woke up hours later. We had to move the van at 9am so we didn’t have to pay and so had breaky further down the road in the form of a fry up. YUM, just what you need for a hangover. We spent a few hours on the beach topping up the tans and me trying to get rid of my perma shorts. Most of the time we were in the sea body surfing. Whilst on the beach, Tom said, ‘that’s Kadeer. I didn’t know who that was so looked around thinking that it may be a celebrity that I hadn’t heard of. It wasn’t, but it was someone that Tom worked with who was on holiday with his family. Of all the beaches, in all of the world, we were parked up metres from each others towels, how bazaar. After 2 hours and a picnic, we had sunned enough and agreed to continue out of Byron and further down. We drove towards Ballina which is the next surf beach down, on the way we stopped at a viewpoint where Tom, with his superman eyesight, saw a herd of dolphins off the coast. You can see these every day but never get bored or not excited to see them, it feels like a real honour. When we got to Ballina we drove to the beaches where loads more surfers were. Ballina is pretty small so we stocked up on cold drinks (shopping day tomorrow, supplies are running low) and drove to a beautiful viewpoint where we could watch the sea. We had strawberries and read the paper, then had a bit of a snooze. Once awake we drove to a peninsular that we could see round the next bay to see whether we could camp there, we couldn’t, but the view from here was amazing and we watched as the sun started to go down and the sky went orange. This was one of those moments, we sat on the rock next to the sea with the sun setting in the distance. We remembered sitting in Bournemouth doing the same thing just before we left and saying ‘ imagine this, we will be doing this in Australia in a few months time’, and tonight we did. We went back to our viewpoint to camp and Tom cooked a stir fry which we sat on our steps and watched the sea while eating our tea. Try and imagine sitting in the back of a camper at the top of a big hill, looking down at the beach and sea below....stunning!! Neither of us slept well tonight, we both had the hebbie jeebies. We put it down to the fact that we had to sleep upside down because we were on a hill and the some other people arrived late and woke us up, that was what we thought anyway...
Monday, up and ready to get on the road. This is when we realised why we both had the heebies...I opened my door to get in the front and in the well of the door was the biggest spider we have ever seen. It must have been the size of Tom’s fist. We didn’t know what to do because you never know if they are dangerous or not and my flips flops wouldn’t have been big enough to hit him. So we stood and contemplated. We hoped he wouldn’t hop in and just decided the best thing to do was to shut the door and hopefully squish him, that didn’t work, he climbed out and around the front of the van and into the panel. Great. Now we were freaked out with a drive ahead of us and we didn’t know where the b***** was. We got in, cautiously, and carried on. As we were driving along, I screamed. The spider was climbing up the front of the windscreen in front of me, I couldn’t work out if it was on the inside or outside. Tom pulled over as quickly as he could and put the window wipers on. As the spider headed Toms way on the wipers I was screaming ‘shut your window, shut you window’ Then the wipers stopped...and the spider disappeared again. I was shaking like a leaf (and a big Jessie). Tom got out to investigate further and we started talking to a passer bye who tried to reassure us that it was probably a Huntsman and they wont hurt you, just scare the bloody life out of you. We couldn’t find it and carried on to McDonalds where we tried to call Grae and Shabbs. To be honest, getting out of the van was a relief. As we pulled up to McDonalds, so did 2 coach full’s of school kids. Closely followed by 3 more, it was manic. When done, we went back and continued to search for the offending spider, still no find. One visit to Sams Warehouse later and we stocked up on bug spray. Tom sprayed the engine bay and anywhere we thought he could be. We drove the next 3 hours both jumping at any gust of wind or movement and with me sitting with a tin of spray in one hand and a flip flop in the other. Tom had fully briefed me on the spray and smack theory which I wasn’t looking forward to using as I would invariably miss and scare the crap out of Tom in the process and cause a major pile up. I don’t think the reason for the disaster being that I sprayed Tom rather than the spider and smacked Tom in the face in panic would work when trying to extract our extortionate deposit from the camper van company. All of this stress, sent me to sleep. One hour later, I was back in the game. We arrived in Coffs Harbour, did our weekly shop and witnessed the after math of a snatch and run mugging which wasn’t nice. We then trekked over to the camp for the night because it was powering up night. Tom lit the bbq although it was raining and a thunderstorm was due, it didn’t stop us though, us Pommes are used to rainy bbq’s. Tom nearly got struck by lightning during the making of our dinner and some kids came over to where it had struck, probably to see if there was anything exciting to see, thankfully there wasn’t. We watched a film again and slept, woken only by the thunderstorm in all its glory. During the storm, we saw Harry the Huntsman spider crawl over our window again. Somehow he had managed to survive the 200km we had driven in the really really hot engine bay. We hoped that this was the last we would see of Harry. We hoped we wouldn’t get struck by lightning, or eaten by a spider. Today had been a stressful one.
Tuesday, we realised that we were on Sydney time now (11 hours in front of the UK rather than 10 hours) and so should get our bums out of bed. Tom did the check for Harry in all of the van’s nooks and crannies. He also sprayed everywhere. There was no sign. We hoped that meant he had been washed away to a new and happy home.....a long way away from us! We had to ask to be let out of the site as we were the naughty ones that checked out and hour late and used the ‘we forgot to change our clock’ excuse. We drove to the surf club beach and had a gander, also realising that we could camp the night there. Then we went to Coffs Harbour Jetty which was a really nice marina. We walked to Muttonbird Island where we saw something wriggling one the grass. We stopped, I panicked until we realised, it had legs so was only a lizard, phew. The walk was nice, however, it undid the whole, tanning the perma shorts the other day, in fact we are both now back about three steps. I have perma shorts and stripe, Tom has a perma vest and Rudolph nose. Why we thought we couldn’t tan through cloud I don’t know. On the way down from the island, Tom spotted a dolphin in the harbour. He is good at this dolphin spotting malarkey. After our walk we shared a local mullet fish and chips on the break wall of the harbour, it was one of the best chish and fips we have had. Next on the agenda today was to research some diving. We found the PADi centre and questioned whether they could take us to see the Grey Nurse Sharks which are in the area. The woman so unhelpful. She was a real ‘I cant guarantee anything’ person when all we wanted was a ‘ we probably see them 3 times a week’ answer. We decided we didn’t have the funds to go with them on a vague answer. We felt like we had caused her a pain in asking questions and although Tom is super excited about shark diving, I am absolutely panicking so we need someone a bit understanding. We stocked up on a few beers and more wine and headed back to the Surfing club where we body boarded in the water for a bit before getting back to the van to admire our tan...marks. Tom made dinner tonight with our leftovers. He is a great cook and enjoying it more. I also enjoy it as it means I can sit, drink wine and watch him! We have 1 week today to get to Sydney. We have really settled into this way of life and have created our own routine so its pretty sad that we are now on the home stretch from Australia. Matt and Kate had kindly lent us their Lonely Planet guide to South East Asia so we have started reading that and getting excited about carrying our bags again (although that fad will only last a week) and eating the food out there which we love. Time has gone and is going so quick we cant believe it. It’s Christmas next Friday and without the tinsel, santa hats and advent calendars it hasn’t really touched us yet which is sad but we wouldn’t swap what we are doing. Like Dad told us, when you’re travelling, your priorities shrink to Where shall I live, What shall I eat, Where is my next beer coming from. The simple life is great, we just hope we can bring some of this back with us.
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