Fraser island then some !

4 more nights in Australia!
So wild. I'm sitting here on the bus (a 10 hour bus from airlie beach to cairns) and I'm just baffled by how fast the last month has gone by.

It's been about a week since my last post, so I'm giving myself a pat on the back for not letting an absurd amount of time pass.

Last we left off josh and I had just gotten to rainbow, which was a bit of a shit hole. Our hostel was more of a villa style and inside it was full of dirt and past guests' garbage. If you were brave enough to open any of the cupboards you would find old rotting food and used latex gloves... But I guess that's what 17$ gets you in Australia, the most expensive country on the planet.

Didn't do much that day other than a workout where I came face to face with a massive cockroach who literally sprinted towards me as I was lying in the grass. Thankfully I spotted him, jumped up, booted him as hard as I could and sprinted away. What was the most frightening was seeing him 20 mins later right beside me at the end of the workout. Clearly he was stalking me and that is pretty terrifying.

That night we hung out a bit with our roommates and they were pretty meh... Rainbow beach was pretty meh.

Caught up with the mikster the next day and headed to our Fraser island trip briefing. Fraser island is meant to be one of the most beautiful spots in Australia. It's basically a giant sand island that's been marked as a world heritage site where 90% of the things that grow there don't grow anywhere else in the world. We signed up to do a 2 night trip on the island where you drive 4WD along the beaches all day, check out the best spots and camp.

We met or car mates, 4 Germans named Henrike, Charlie, Minh and Max as we as this 30 year old Irish woman who's name is currently escaping me. After a quick grocery shop for the trip the excitement of the day was pretty much over and we went to bed.

The next morning we woke up, loaded the jeeps and headed to Fraser. Right away we knew our guide, jimmy, was going to be a total whack job but definitely also entertaining. He was a middle aged man who looked about 70 with a Baseball glove appearance to his face and brown or missing teeth. We had another guide with us named Beaver who somehow knew all about hockey and talked with the boys about it for ages. He once used the phrase "shiver me timbers" in a totally sincere and not joking way which made the boys laugh for like 20 minutes.

Back to Fraser... So the first day was awful and given the choice that day I would have gladly returned to our bug infested hostel. It poured on us all day, and 20 minutes in one of the cars broke down. Our guides disappeared to fix the car for 3 hours without telling us anything and left us at a beach where we sat in the car and waited for them to come back and get us. Eventually some random man who "didn't work for the company but was going to start soon" picked us up and took us to a cafe where we continued to wait and thankfully beaver and jimmy did eventually come get us. Finally we did get to the campsite where our car had a BBQ, then the whole group had a bit of a party night. We were with two other cars, including one filled with Swedish girls that the boys obviously loved and I actually kind of did too. Jimmy gave us the long and true version of the woman who's baby got eaten by the dingo ("the dingo ate my baby") and also instructed us that if you ever get chased by an alligator you should run in circles. We got a rousing game of ride the bus going, then animal, and eventually crashed. I got woken up by josh and mike absolutely shrieking in terror about some giant ant on our tent. Such babies i'm traveling with.

The next day, thankfully, was gorgeous. We got an early start and headed to the champagne pools, which are these pools created by the native people to catch fish from the ocean. We played in there for a bit then did a mini hike up Indian head where we saw one of the best views of the trip, all on fb of course. I had my turn driving on this day and it was pretty cool to both drive on the wrong side of the car and on the beach. Beaver took us to this place called Eli creek where the creek is basically a lazy river but it's full of eels. We passed on it and when we got back to the cars the transport inspectors were ticketing beaver because our car's hand break didn't work. A little sketchy and him and jimmy had to take it in and have it repaired, just another little incident of the trip or as jimmy would say, "all part of the adventure". In the afternoon beaver took us sand boarding on what at first appeared to be a death cliff. Eventually we all worked up the courage to go down and it was heaps of fun, josh even took a snowboard down it and did pretty good. The only bad part about it was that it was a 20 minute walk up a giant sand dune in the blazing heat, and for those of you who don't know this, walking up a sand dune is the hardest form of walking. So tiring. We got back to the site and had a bit less of a party than the night before and headed to bed.

On the last day we got up, packed up the site and took the cars to check out this shipwreck (pictures on fb). It was pretty cool to see a giant steel boat washed up on shore. Apparently it's been there for years and its starting to fall apart. We saw a picture of the boat from before the crash and it looked pretty big and sturdy, so there's just one more reason to fear the ocean.

Speaking of fear... I have become increasingly aware of how much death surrounds you in Australia. Everywhere you go (especially on Fraser) there are venomous snakes and spiders. On Fraser we were actually told never to walk anywhere alone because it was too dangerous, and we were also given dingo sticks which are long poles used to defend yourself if a group of dingos chooses to come after you. All very very scary especially in the darkness.

Anyways back to our last day... We finished the trip up at lake Mackenzie, which is what they told us is the pinnacle of Fraser. On the way there our guide's car popped a tire and we sat for 45 minutes waiting for someone to fix it because he didn't have a jack...... Brutal. Lake Mackenzie was nice, but I think it was a bit of a disappointment. Either way we had fun swimming with the Germans and the weather was great so it wasn't a bad way to end the trip... Little did we know the adventure wasn't over yet.

On the drive back, we noticed we had very little gas. Jimmy waved it off saying we'd be fine. We weren't. We ran out of gas... In the worst possible place. Josh was driving when we ran out midway through a 20 meter stretch with the highest tide we'd seen. We stopped right as a giant wave hit us, and they kept coming after that for a few minutes. I didn't realize how bad this was until I saw jimmy and beaver sprinting towards us in panic. Obviously the sub tank was empty, so jimmy hopped in and just revd the engine until somehow the car drove again, but only after absolutely destroying beaver for not knowing how to do it. What a whack job. And so ends our time in Fraser. Despite all the mishaps, it was perhaps the best 2 days of the trip and definitely one of the most beautiful places we've been. Didn't hurt that we had sick company in our car either.

We got back to our dirty hostel, actually happy to be there because it was a room and not a tent. That night we partied with the Germans and another friend Adrian and despite the fact that we didn't leave the picnic table we started at all night it was a really fun night, despite Minh being a hooligan and pushing me fully clothed into the pool. I got back to the room before the boys that night and me and my 7 foot tall male roommate spent an hour hopping from bed to bed dodging cockroaches, he frantically killing them with cockroach spray and me pointing and screaming... The cockroach massacres continued the next morning.

Finally we were ready to leave rainbow. Josh and I hit the beach with the Germans. It wasn't a spectacular beach but definitely nice. After that the three of us hopped on the greyhound for an 18 hour trip to airlie beach. It's disgusting how much time we've spent on the greyhound... I think it's close to 50 hours now. Josh got stuck with this Canadian freak beside him who small talked him the whole trip about a lot of weird stuff, but we also met another cool Canadian so I guess it all balances out.

Finally the next morning we got to Airlie, a cute little town with a wasaga vibe. Like Brisbane it had a manmade lagoon where we spent most of our time. We couldn't swim in the water because it's infested with jellyfish, another thing in Australia actively looking to harm you.

The Germans caught up with us on the second day and we were very happy to see them. We had a nice family bbq and even treated ourselves to a cake for dessert. That night we all hit the strip (kind of a sad excuse for a strip) and had a not so hot night out. Minh woke us up bright and early the next day to take mike and I to a waterfall. I will admit, before I came on this trip I was expecting to see a waterfall a day... Once again I was wrong, this is only the 2nd real waterfall we have seen, but it was awesome. We played in it or ages and then had a very long photoshops which will undoubtedly be popping onto your newsfeed any day now. Josh would've come but he was unfortunately dealing with a paralyzing hangover. this reminds me that I haven't told you guys about goon, which is the only thing we've been drinking in australia. Basically it's boxed "wine" if it can be called that and you can get 5 liters for 11$. Of course, with this deal comes a trade off... I've tried not to look too much into it but I know that goon contains traces of things like fish bone, fish eggs and other questionable ingredients. I don't understand how it exists but it does and it somehow tastes delicious. The most unfortunate thing about it is that when you wake up the next day it feels like an 18 wheeler has driven through one ear and out the other, as josh so accurately exhibited on this fine morning.

We had to say goodbye to Minh and max that afternoon because they were getting on a sailboat to check out Whitsundays (a place much to expensive for us but that I would've loved to do) but we got to party with Henrike and Charlie one more night. We also got one last chance to catch up with Annie, Laura and Seren a they got there on our last night. We had a big party in our room with our swiss roommates and night out and it was a pretty good way to say goodbye to everyone.

That brings me to this morning. By 8am we were up as hauling our sad selves to the greyhound station for a 10 hour trip up to our last stop, cairns, which is like the mecca for backpacker partying. We'll be there for four nights and then we say goodbye to this beautiful country, but for now I'm not going to burden myself with those sad thoughts.


Thanks for sticking with me as always! In 3 weeks we can have all these discussions in person back on the homeland xoxo

Yoyoyo

Friends! What's up? I'm chillen in the back seat of the greyhound (Australia's version) on my way out of Byron bay and towards surfer's paradise. It's been quite a while since we've last been in touch and to be honest the thought of spending the next half hour writing this is unbearable but I know some of you have just been sitting on the edge of your seats in anticipation for another edition of this, so here goes nothing.

Last we left off we were in Sydney. We ended up staying there for about a week and I will say that I wish it could've been for longer. After our old roommates left we ended up partying with sam, the famous lost boy (refer to previous blogs), annie, laura and Seren. We ended our time there at Annie's beach house... That's right, beach house. She's quite the high roller. Her house is massive and backs on to a harbour where he basically has her own private beach with no one else in sight. The walk down to the beach is basically through a jungle, which obviously is the boys' worst nightmare since there must be millions of spiders just lurking in there... I did see a few lizards and spiders and josh had quite the ordeal as well during his workout. The girls made us a lovely dinner and we watched Drive which may be the weirdest movie ever, but also pretty great.

After that we headed to coffs harbour, where their claim to fame is a giant (maybe even the world's biggest) banana. To get there we had to take a 9 hour overnight greyhound which was atrocious. We got into coffs at 4am and somehow got into our hostel room 10 hours before check in, which was pretty much the highlight of our stint there. We also went to the beach but it was average at best and raining. Didn't even see the banana.

Thankfully we got out of coffs at 6am the next morning and this time boarded a bus that was only 5 hours. Our next destination: Byron bay. Byron is a touristy beach town filled with surfers and stoners. I think it will probably go down as one of the best stops on this 3 month escapade . The beach was really nice, the waves were huge and the sun was shining. We ended up staying for 3 nights and definitely could've stayed for more. Almost right after getting there we ran into Marie and Will, two friends that we met in New Zealand. This trip has shown me many times that the world is a very small place. We all got on a bus the next day to go to Nimbin. Nimbin is a very small hippy village outside of Byron where you get bombarded with offers for any kind of drug you could want. It was pretty crazy to see it all happening so publicly and it made me feel like I was being punked. Super cool and super jokes overall. On the bus we also met Sarah & Charlie, two girls from the Uk, and Derek, our first american friend.


Anyways a few days have gone by since what I wrote above and I'm now in rainbow beach.. Got a little sidetracked by fun!

Byron bay continued to be awesome until we left, including another trip out with the gang and another beach day with the sweeds, Marie, William and Simon. We also got to catch up with Annie, Laura and Seren on the last night which is always a treat. We went to this one legendary bar called cheeky monkeys where the dance floor is entirely made up of tables and basically everyone just acts ridiculously and has a wonderful time.

The next morning, derek, the boys, Charlie, Sarah and I got back on the greyhound and headed for surfer's paradise, which is a pretty cool city north of byron. We got on the shuttle to our hostel and realized it was way out of town, which was unfortunate, but it had a great pool, big rooms and a theater room so it wasn't all bad. Charlie and Sarah found a bar crawl for us... For 13$ we got entry to 4 bars, a BBQ, pizza, free transport and an hour of bowling. Its always quite the rush to find a deal like that as a traveller and it made the night even better knowing how cheap it was. We had a great time tearing up the dance floor and the alley. It was also Charlie's birthday so not a bad way to celebrate I think.

The next day the 6 of us headed into the city to shop and check out the beach, both of which were great but would have been better if it weren't raining. We watched 3 old people getting surf lessons on the beach and absolutely sucking at it and I got a waffle cone fudge ice cream at McDonald's (amazing. Did you know that was a thing?).

That night we ended up just watching some movies... American beauty (so messed up) and Happy Gilmore, and went to bed. The next day I tragically misplaced my camera in my room, which was unlocatable despite scouring the entire hostel. I have developed a few conspiracy theories regarding the Swedish girls doing the laundry and somehow washing my camera then throwing it out, crazy I know but I'm SO convinced. I had to buy a new one which basically killed my soul as does any time I have to spend more than 20$. Not to mention how much my soul was damaged by the loss of a month's worth of photos... Thank god for fb and tagging.

Once again we all boarded the greyhound, this time to Brisbane. Brisbane might be my favorite city ever. Its so pretty, has so much cool architecture going on and is full of stuff to do surrounded by young people. There's also an awesome man made lagoon on the south side (pictures below) where we ended up spending the majority of our first day. After that we wandered everywhere from the art gallery to the botanical gardens and had a lovely afternoon.

That night Derek took us to a gay bar (a first for all 3 of us) and I was very impressed by the boys' ability to maintain confidence with their straight boy dance moves making them stick out like sore thumbs. To be honest I think they provided quite a bit of entertainment for everyone around. We walked home with one stop to comfort a lost bride who had been ditched by her bridesmaids at her bachelorette. Probably the most hostile person I've ever met but I supposed times were tough...

The next day was st pattys, which is funny since yours is just wrapping up at home. As all of you know, we take this holiday very seriously at home, so it was a little disheartening to realize that all our international friends didn't, but we made the most of it. We began the day with Derek, Annie, Laura, Marie and Seren who caught up to us in Brisbane, found Sarah and charlie and headed to the lagoon to start the festivities. A few hours and a Chinese feast later we were in fine form and ready for early bed, but we rallied. There was a huge party on the roof of our hostel, and after that we headed to a few bars. The coolest stop was this Irish club that was all lit up and had a band of old men playing some jigs. The crowd was going nuts and the dancing was wild. I had my first Guinness which tasted like newspaper. We strolled home with a few snack stops and fell fast asleep after a hard day's work.

Today josh and I got up at the crack of dawn to get to rainbow beach, and mike will catch us tomorrow. Saying goodbye to Derek sucked because he was such a calm presence in such an aggressive group, but he's off to some amazing times in New Zealand. We'll see everyone else sometime before we're done here... Which is in 2 weeks! Time goes so fast and I really wish I could make it stop, but definitely looking forward to mtg up with Wong and Lindsey in Thailand!

That's it for now! Sorry for this absurdly long post, that's what happens when you procrastinate procrastinate procrastinate! Love you all and will try to be in touch again soon!

Australia is not baaaad

Hello to my north american subscribers! (all 3 of you)

This is my very first blog post in australia! And I have chosen a delightful place to sit down for the next 30 minutes to write it... I'm at an internet cafe undernearth McDonalds filled with gamers playing WOW. It's all about the atmosphere.

Anyways, tomorrow will mark the end of our first week in Australia, which seems absolutely insane. It's been an amazing week and we've seen so much and met so many people.

Our first night in Sydney was a bit of a wash. We got in pretty late after our fleury of flights and shuttles, rolled up to our 10 man room, met our roommates and passed out. We woke up and pretty much hopped right on to a train headed for Wollongong. Wollongong is a university town a few hours out of Sydney, and the boys and I headed over there to catch up with Will and Lizzie and also to get amongst some of the O Week action. Lucky us, we've gotten to experience 2 O weeks on this trip... Does make me feel a bit old and creepy though. When we arrived our lovely buddies were there to escort us to Will's place on a free (wooohoo) bus. We rolled on to the campus where they had 1000000 booths set up, a magic act happening on the quad, and several creepy humans dressed as animals running around. I thought I loved the University of Otaga, but I think Wollongong was even cooler. Will lives in student housing called KB, which is basically a village of townhouses right beside the school. Luckily because it was O Week they were doing a bunch of free (woohoo) stuff and we scored a free brunch and a free dinner. Right away we met some pretty sweet people including Will's roomies, Pat, Sam and Jarred. They were a bunch of really cool guys who liked to party and liked meeting new people even more. The first night we hit up a house party that was absolutely massive and then headed to the bar... It was all a pretty big blur and Mike is telling me I was the worst wingwoman of all time so I don't know how successful of a night it was, but it was really fun. The next day me, lizzie and Amy and Shuana (two of the radest and nicest girls I've ever met) headed over to the gym to watch the boys play basketball. I have to tell you, dear Canadian friends, that Australians are not the best basketball players I've ever seen. In fact, they're amongst the worst. It was pretty painful to watch but thankfully was pretty brief. Afterwards we joined them for a game of on the rack where I sunk a half court shot granny style and won fame and admiration for a glorious 2 seconds before mike sank the exact same shot non-granny style right after me. Once again we hit the bar where it was retro night. As you can imagine, artists such as b44, aqua and blink all blarred all night long and it was totally awesome. This is also the night that I had the pleasure of meeting Cameron, a tall tree like basketball player (we actually met 3 guys who played for wollogong including him). He lost a bet to me, and to avoid paying up he elaborately managed to get himself kicked out. Quite impressive. Since we were having such a good time in Wollongong, we decided to extend our stay one more night. Willy, Lizzie, Shauna and Amy took us shopping and then Shauna and Amy took us home to make us the most amazing dinner I've had since I've been gone, including chicken parm from scratch, roasted potatos, sweet potato fries and salad, thus making them the best cooks I've had the pleasure of knowing. Sadly the weather was never that good while we were there (tons of rain), so we didn't get to see the beaches, but I've been told they're pretty great. We had a movie day post shopping... 10 things I hate about you and Anger Management. totally underrated and amazing movies. After dinner, we got a bit caught up in a Nitro Circus marathon courtesy of Amy and ended up watching the entire first season instead of being social. I do not regret this though, because I now know that I'm meant to marry Travis Pastrana. . After a long day, me and the boys had a sleepover with Amy and Shauna where the boys spent hours worrying about poisonous spiders attacking them in their sleep, woke up and shipped out back to Sydney.

We got back to base and found out we had been put in the sickest room ever, a 6 man ensuite that could easily fit 2-3 more bunk beds in it. My dream room. We met our new room mates, Kali and Elita (probably just butchered that spelling) from Taiwan, and Connor from Britain (obviously). Overall this was probably he most fun and united room we've had other than with the kiwi experience, but sadly all 3 of them have left or are leaving tomorrow :(

Anyways, our first day back in Sydney was also the last day of Mardi Gras, so the three of us and Connor got to go see the parade which was absolutely ridiculous but also absolutely amazing. After that we caught up with Kali and Elita and played slap the bag (so fun) then all headed out to club 333 to meet Annie, Laura, and some of their friends including Sam, the outback survivor man (refer to previous blog post). We had a great night and lots of dancing was done. We woke up in the morning a lot worse for wear and once again went shopping which i'm realizing is the boys' favorite activity. Mike contemplated buying some vans and settled on a stripped t, josh withheld and Connor slept on anything he could lean on. After that the boys and I headed to see the famous opera house and the harbor bridge which were kind of cool but also kind of meh. We finished up the day at nandos, which is basically the equivalent to a Swiss chalet but better, then once again had a room pre and headed down to scary canary, then off to a casino where Mikey won 50 dollars playing the slots.

Connor left this morning, and the Taiwanese girls are leaving tomorrow morning. We got a new dust roommate in the bunk above me named Haymish who talks too much ("never kiss a Dutch girl, they are bad kissers") and rolls around in his bed nonstop so not the best first impression, but he is British so maybe we should give him a chance. Today we hiked up to uSyd and grabbed a frisbee from one of the profs there courtesy of a hookup through Tushar. Lovely guy. I am very excited about being back in the frisbee business ! After that Annie and Laura came and picked us up and took us to Bondi beach. It felt so good to see a sand beach again, which we haven't had since Nelson. The waves were amazing and it was a very sunny day, which sadly is a first for our time here but I'm optimistic that the weather is changing for the better. Tonight we haven't done much, and will probably have an early night and get up tomorrow to hit up Manly beach. We have 3 more nights in sydney, ending it with a sleepover at Annie's house and then heading north up to Byron Bay.

Australia is actually crawling with beautiful girls, but the boys are all short and stocky which is a bit of a travesty. It is also frighteningly expensive here. In nz we were paying 20$/night for hostels, here we pay 40. Their dollar is also annoyingly strong so we're getting smacked every time we take money out, but its honesty pretty worth it. Sydney is such a cool city, so live and sooooooo busy even compared to Toronto. Hoping it only gets better from here!

That's all for now! Until next time my friends