Before that happened though there was much to do, first thing first was finally getting a camera which i got down from $330 to $240 so i was pretty happy my Thai negotiating skill were still in order. That took me all of 3 minutes but then i had the daunting prospect of saying goodbye to both Miss Claire Scott and French Mafia boss Louise Peltier within five minutes of each other. I'm crap at goodbyes so i was a bloody mess but i just about managed to keep it together before doing an Andrew and bawling my eyes out, "Man Up!" haha. Francois, Jonas and Nina also returned for one final goodbye which really brought a good atmosphere to the hostel again for my last few days and it was great to see them all.
I also finally managed to get on one of the works that had been running for months with me seeing the world before midday, a very rare occurrence. I couldn't hive timed a better day to see everything though and walking from Coogee to Bondi was pretty cool actually, Laurence actually knew his shit despite being the 'King of Cheese' and i actually managed to get some much need photos. All that was needed now was to plan my trip up the coast. Laurence being a former bus driver on the Oz Experience was a big help in planning where to go and where not too, Within twenty minutes i had four weeks of activities planned and it's not like i'd be hanging around anywhere so there was much to do. Passing my plan around to everyone who'd done it already confirmed i was basically hitting all the good places so that was a good start. Before i confirmed everything i had to shoot off to see Claire for a final final farewell and to gain a copy of Crime and Punishment from her too which was nice, her directions aren't quite that good though leaving both of us thinking they other had stood us up haha. Bloody women. This all took awhile so by the time i returned it was too late to book and i had to stay another day but i didn't mind at all. I'd easily take an extra day there and have a chat with her then shooting off into the night. Also i did feel al lot better for not being a quivering mess or shaking this time too haha. I wish i was joining her for Lady Gaga that evening though, she's the new Prince I tell thee.
Laurence had informed me that my pick up was Saturday 7:45pm but when i came down on friday night Craig told me to be there for 6:10 am, quite the fucking difference. This meant i'd have to stay up all night and miss saying goodbye to some people but it had to happen sometime and at least i'd be sober on the bus. It did feel quite surreal waiting for it, much like how i felt back in the departure lounge way back in September but it was cool to have Paul and Owen steaming drunk to see me off, just like they were when i first met them in November. We'd certainly had a good run and the words "They're might be another Gary but never another you" certainly were nice to here. Off to new adventures it was then.
1. Surf Camp
One thing stressed about going on the Oz Experience was that the bus journeys were a lot better with people being a hell of a lot more social and this proved definitely true for me. Within minutes i got talking to a Danish girl called Barbara and at our stop a bunch of us all sat down and had a good bit craic on. A guy called Sam seemed a bit weird to me though, he certainly proved to be later.....
The first stop was surf camp arriving there about 5pm after a 6am start, our driver was named 'Disco' and despite having the German affliction of wearing socks with sandals was spot on. Once arriving at the camp we were giving a tour by the night manager Wayne who proved a character to say the least. Most people thought he was a massive prick due to him "largin' it" at every opportunity but he was a harmless self parody really and you have to be a loud dick to do that job anyway. I did laugh at his claim to drunkenly "lick faces" when drunk just like Rick James and myself from time to time.
We ate dinner then hit the goon for some drinking games with me Tom, Tom2, Hannah, Katie, and Katie 2 completely smashing it. Katie especially earned everyones respect for her steller ring of fire performance. They were a few groups there so we all merged together for this domino like drinking game but the North Americans took it way to seriously treating it like the "world series" (it's in one country you losers) and having a go at others who were too pissed to flip the cups. They really are a continent of load mouth wankers, the yanks know it too as they even go round pretending they're Canadian since they're hated so much. They can't fool me though. By this point everyone was steamin' so we moved onto the fire thing and talked complete bullshit to each other and everyone else. Tom also started "prangin' out" thinking he lost his wallet, then finding it, then thinking he'd lost again and then being sick everywhere. Tremendous scenes. I had a few conversations with sobers where i could see the fear in their eyes cause they knew they were with a raving drunk and were thinking of exit plans and then i hit my shack for sleep since we had a 7:30 start( some poor bastards had to get up at 6 ). One problem was i kept going in the wrong rooms and freaking people out until finally Dan informed me "it's the one on the right mate". I was extremely confused though waking up at 6am to darkness and not having a clue where i was until i remembered i was no longer in Sydney, that really is a horrible feeling. Three times i've woke up expecting to be in my bed back home until it all comes back within seconds.
Obviously everyone was a bit rough for our lesson but the beach and water really proved to be the best hangover cure ever. Now anyone that knows me can easily predict how awful i'd be at surfing and i surely didn't disappoint. Much like Paul Campbell i could barely lay on the board never mind stand up on it! The most difficult thing was shifting all your weight onto my front left leg, i'm so heavily right sided in everything i do it just became to unnatural to remember despite me knowing what i was doing wrong every time with the board sending my flying backwards every time. A sigh to see it was. Others were flying all over the shop but i was happy just to reach my goal of the day and standing up, as standard i got way to pleased with myself when i eventually did and went somersaulting into the sea but it was good enough for me. Surfing was actually really hard graft so after a few hours of that, swallowing copious amounts of sea water and flying about i was wrecked. It is also worth mentioning how much my wet suit resembled that of a gimps but without the hood. After surf anf lunch it was on the bus and off to the next stop of Byron Bay.
2. Byron Bay
I was so tired by the time we got on the bus so my "head drops" made an appearance again, thankfully they weren't landing on Holly or anyone else this time, unlike our Bangkok to Phuket bus ride. Wayne and the mojo surf tossers joined our bus giving it the big lad and just making fools of themselves, " oh man i'm so fucking wasted dude". Pipe down you've had about three bottles, give me a call after three bottles of Whiskey then we'll talk.
We were staying at the Holiday Vilage with Dan, Sam, Tom and me getting an apartment there which turned out to be a pretty sweet deal. Byron immediately looked like a rather nice spot with just one main high street leading onto another amazing beach. We get very lucky with the weather so hitthe beach the next day; before that though we had a rather odd night. As previously stated i thought Sam was a freak straight away and once again my primed instincts didn't let me down. He casually announced he was popping out to meet his girlfriend that he'd never mentioned before and "wasn't expecting to see her here". Then an audience with the two of them dispelled any doubts of them being fruitcakes, i'm sure they were siblings actually. During the night our room was pitch black to the point of zero vision, Sam was on the bunk above me and started making weird noises then suddenly went "oohhh ahhh, do yo want some of that do ya?" Pervert. Fuck knows what he was doing but i was seriously disturbed, Tom obviously the same shouted "Sam, what the fuck are you doing?" only for Sam to mumble another odd response. He was blatantly trying to crack one out. Thank fuck he left the next day is all i can say. Our neighbors were thankfully less weird and had managed to get from Cairns to Byron in just two weeks, hardcore to say the least. Stupid as well obviously.
We spent most of the next day on the beach with the waves, gutters, and rips really giving us a hammering. About twenty seconds after getting into the water i nearly got took out by a surfboard but the owner just happened to be my old roommate and legend Jonas Linde. Unbelievable Jeff. We had a bit craic on which was good until he had to shoot off to return the surfboard. The beach soon wore us out so we returned home with the intentions of "getting on it" and the whole bus had a table booked at cheeky monkeys. We had a few free jugs which is always nice but the music was just like everywhere else here......shite, so no matter how hard we tried you can't have a truly amazing night without spending half the night at the bar. One novelty was that the place didn't actually have a dance floor so you had to dance on the tables all night, unique i guess. Much like other backpacker joints it also had stupid games, the highlight of which involved one guy fitting 44 marshmallows in his mouth, i bet he was so proud. One thing i was proud of at this point was how the Sydney catchphrases were taking off, people were manning up, getting involved and suresuresuring everywhere. Not too much Bruno's going on sadly.
3. Nimbin
We awoke yet again to more hangovers and this time it was coupled with torrential rain, thankfully we'd booked a day trip to Nimbin so wouldn't be wasting a day in Byron. Nimbin is a pretty famous place here on the east coast for being the Amsterdam of Australia, so basically everyone goes there to smoke weed, do mushrooms and eat hash cakes. It's quite baffling who a place like it could exist really but it stems from an Aquarius freedom festival held there in the seventies, some no good dirty hippy got busted for smoking weed and then the rest stormed the police station. Out numbered they let him out and the rest decided to never leave so i was eager to see what it was like, especially after Lee informing me it was full of "fucking weirdos". Tremendous.
The "town" itself was just one street and resembled what i'd imagine San Fransisco was like during it's late sixties free love and psychedelic period, the place was stuck in one giant time warp and full of old hippies, bums and oddly a group of aggressive english charvers(not chavs) whom were all pushing drugs. At this point all i could think of was the potential look on Alfie's face if he was here to witness it all, never a man would have appeared more uncomfortable or be surrounded so much by everything he hated. The place didn't have much to it all really, just cafe's, hippy clothing stores, hemp shops and a very odd "museum" made out of what seemed to be paper. The day was made though when Louise Peltier made a special guest appearance out of nowhere and it sure was great to see her, trade a few stories of what had went down in her absence and of course do the mandatory high fives before i had to jump back on the bus. Initially i though a couple of hours at Nimbin was a bit short but it proved to be too much if anything, a very odd place.
Thankfully the rain had cleared earlier so by the time we headed off to our BBQ the sun was blazing, the pub we had it at was nice if strangely big for the middle of nowhere. A lot of places here have bookies inside the pub and i just couldn't imagine that being the norm back home, it would be carnage everywhere.
From there we headed off to a secluded waterfall spot to do some jumping and have a bit of a dip in a small lake. It was good fun actually especially with the driver being nuts jumping off all manner of dangerous places and even scaling a massive tree to scale off. The days events done we headed back to Byron.
4. Back To Byron
On our return we found we had some new flatmate's who had all just jumped off their own respective Oz Experience bus. Once again they were all sound and there was even a guy from Wanstead amongst them, soon after i remarked that how after all the time i've spent away the only two local people i'd met was a girl from wallsend back on phi phi and the notorious Melanie Freeman from Whitley Bay "Melanie you have the x factor!, can i get a spoon?" a guy from "Jarra" walked in. I've never seen a man more happy to find out i was from South Shields and he literally climbed over people to shake my hand. We bantered for a bit with all the usual talk of "Do you know such and such"? and " Do you drink here and there?" and he turned out to be pretty sound. One thing that did amuse me was the prospective delight he took in adding me on Facebook just so he could see how many "mutual friends" we had, ah the small delights eh.
With the next day being blazing hot again me Tom and Dan decided to take the trek along the beach to get to the most easterly point in Australia and visit the Lighthouse too. It was quite the steep walk but once again was made all the better when Louise randomly popped out of the middle of nowhere again, she remarked how i must have a GPS on her but we both know she's got me tracked everywhere and doing plenty of stalking, suresuresure. Having been away 4 days i'd randomly bumped into four people i knew already so it was proving to be a good trip already. The rest of the day we just dossed about looking for AFL tops for some reason until Tom got excited by the sudden prospect of a Dubstep night, I myself was a lot more skeptical and proved to be right on when he turned up at the door to be told the promoters hadn't turned up haha. Not surprised at all, they really couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery in this place.
5. Brisvegas
The trip to Brissy was the first time our group got splinted up since we all met in surf camp. Dan stayed on in Byron, Will was shooting straight up to cairns, Olly to Rainbow, Tom to surfers and myself heading for Brisbane. I could've easily stayed in Byron longer but time is short so i had to move on. I was slightly horrified at our first drop off when Tom told me to lookout the window only for me to see Sam waiting to board. Bollocks. I literally tried to hide from him but it was to no avail, he tried to rip me off with some Base card scam that he wanted to sell to me but i told him to try it on some other mug. Thank fuck he wasn't gan to Brisbane.
I despised Base in Sydney so god knows why i checked in the Brisbane one (well we all know it was laziness) to find it was exactly the same as the previous one, worse if anything. No atmosphere, antisocial prison cell like dorms and nobody wanting to talk. With me only staying two day and the weather being nice i thought fuck it and set out to have a wander round the city/ I quite liked it there to be honest, it's very much like Newcastle(it even sells the Viz) but obviously a lot cleaner, nicer and a distinct lack of tracksuits about. Unlike most cities here it's based on a river not the coast so they even have a man made bech to make up for that one. There's not much you can really say about the place as it's like all cities really and i wasn't doing any "activities" there, just being a tourist. I did enjoy a visit to the culture south bank with it's libraries, theatre and an arthouse very much like the Baltic, always a good thing.
Staying on the toon theme i managed to get a conversation out of a couple of people in the room to my shock. One guy was from North Shields of all places and as standard for the place was a complete moron, he wasn't a dick or anything and maybe i'm harsh but he couldn't finish his sentences he was that dumb. I though he was pissed at first so was trying to guide him to the end but it turned out he was just amazingly retarded. There was a Swedish couple here too who seemed nice enough but then i had a look at his reading habits and it freaked me out a little. He had three books: "How to start conversations and make friends", "The definitive book of body language" and my favourite "How to please your woman in and out of bed". Okayyy then, that's just a bit wrong isn't it? Especially when he's already got a girlfriend. Some people. Oh and finally it is definitely worth mentioning that both him and the guy from North Shields were working in a meat packing factory, must be a common trade up this east coast eh Jon Cornick? haha. I couldn't stop laughing when i heard that one. Tremendous scenes once again! Destination Noosa next.
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