East Coast Chillin: Brisbane, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay, Nimbin (Jan 6 – Jan 23)

Arriving in Brisbane was a bit strange because it was a real city with skyscrapers, people in suits going to work, different sections with their own niche, and all sorts. I hadn't been in such a place since Perth, which was many months ago now. So when we clambered out of the car completely packed with camping gear with no shirt or shoes on wearing only bathing suits, I felt a bit out of place. But it was a nice feeling, getting there and people aren't immediately looking at you thinking “who are you and where do you come from??” they were just carrying on with their lives, it's nice sometimes to be noticed and greeted for being outsiders but it's also just as nice to go unnoticed once in a while. We decided to stay in Brisbane for 1 week, as it worked out cheaper at the hostel than just staying a few days, and it gave us some time to do some partying and not worry about getting back in the car the next day.

I had a few nice walks around the city, it wasn't so big, but there were several nice places to eat and drink, had a nice medium sized city vibe. Nights out in Brisbane were pretty fun, streets plastered in bars and people thronging from every directions; short dresses, the highest of heels, gelled hair, the smell of hope and desperation in the air and people everywhere trying to drink away the memories of the week's events at work, I was definitely back in a city. We started hanging out with two other Dutch guys, one was pretty quiet and reserved but the other was quite possibly the pimpest pimp I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Now, I enjoy vagina as much as the next heterosexual 20-something male but this fellow (side note: funnily enough his name was Bass, which is dangerously close to Boss, and I'd have to say he was one) was on a whole other level, some may even consider him a slut. He had MULTIPLE videos of his sexual encounters that he enjoyed showing every chance he could, while chuckling and and telling you to wait for the best parts.

On the night we all went out together I watched him walk up to at least 10 girls, say something in their ear dance one or two steps and proceed to make out with them, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I was in awe of his sheer confidence and determination, although I didn't see him get rejected once. My favourite encounters were, when he approached two girls waiting at a stop light and said “Which one of you is the better kisser?” then starts making out with one, and turns to the other and does the same. He then looked at them and points at the victor, the light changes and they carried on their way. The next was while we were walking up the stairs to another bar he stopped a girl on the stairs said something to her and they started making out on the stairs, then she left....legendary. This was probably the closest thing I've ever seen to what a real life Hank Moody (Californication) would be like, at least in terms of getting girls not all the other cool stuff.

Before arriving in Brisbane I had arranged to meet up with a dude named Casey who is friends with my friend Ben from back home. We previously met at the Glassco residence, I can't remember the occasion, maybe Christmas(?), but there was a delicious dinner and Ben's grandmother was there. So it was going to be nice to meet someone from back home, and it was only when we met again that I realised how slow I had started to speak, because once we got together I found myself speeding through words like I was tapping into the Speed Force. We had an awesome night, I visited his house in Brisbane, on the West Side I believe pretty trendy hipster area, and met his girlfriend who was pretty cool as well (side note: he was there on a working visa/living with her, and she would in turn do the same in Canada in the coming months). He showed me all his delicious Canadian condiments (maple syrup, Ms. Vicki's BBQ sauce, poutine gravy, among other things) and we chilled at his place for a while before hitting the town and meeting up with a few of his friends. We just hit up a few nice quiet spots had some drinks and good conversation, Casey is a really interesting guy to talk to because he is very politically opinionated and very Canadian at his core and proud about it.

After a lovely week in Brisbane we had a brief stop in Surfers Paradise, it had sort of a Miami Beach or Niagra Falls type feel; and if you've been to either of these places you'll know that that's not really a compliment. Robert and I still went out and had a nice night, but we only stayed for the one night so we were off to Byron Bay in the morning.

Byron Bay is a great little beach town full of backpackers, surfers, and chilled out old hippies; everybody is there to just relax, surf, and have a good time. It was difficult to find accommodation, we had to try at least 5 different places before finding somewhere, because it was right after New Year's and all the backpackers go north up the coast after spending their New Year's in Sydney. We ended up staying for a week, it was a nice relaxing time, not doing much site seeing or going out (a little of both). I met two guys that I met previously in Broome (Leo and Masa) not sure if I mentioned them before, but they were pretty cool dudes, only stopping in Byron for a few nights on their way to Nimbin. Nimbin is a small town, in land, known for having a large community of hippies and being very open about casual drug use, especially marijuana. I'm sure at one point it was a lovely community, very friendly and loving, however now it's one grubby street teeming with drug peddlers and degenerates. On my visit there, at one point I was actually asked, in quite an aggressive tone, “What are you doing?! What are you looking for?” while just having a wonder around the town. I was actually excited to go to Nimbin and was planning on staying for a week or so but ended up leaving after a few hours, it just had the wrong vibe, not at all what I was looking for.

I had a few more nights in Byron Bay which is when I met an interesting group travelling together (at that time) from a few different countries, there are a lot of variables to this groups dynamic so I will just stick to one. Her name was Djohar, black girl from France (I only mention her race because she told me one night that she missed black people and I thought that was funny, growing up as a volleyball player there was many a time I was the only dark skinned gentleman for miles), I would say she was probably the head of this group. She also had an amazing singing voice (side note: she could sing and speak in four languages) and wasn't too bad on the guitar either, we jammed with some homeless aboriginal guys one night for a while and got a bit of a crowd going, it was pretty awesome. She, like the rest of her group, was extremely passionate about life and very expressive. Which was a strange and interesting experience for someone like myself, who some people find to be a bit emotionally detached and others say I'm too emotionally involved with myself, but that's neither here nor there. Everything they said had so much emotion, there was lots of drama within the group, two of the girls in the group were together and one was more involved in the relationship than the other, so that struck up many a conversation. In the end I found them exhausting and a bit full on, but fun and exciting at the same time, we had some good times.

Next was the final destination with my current and longest lasting travelling group, Sydney! Too many good stories together guys, hope you both enjoy the rest of your travels and get all that you want out of your experiences.

East Coast Chillin: Sea Turtles...serious business (Jan 3 – Jan 5)

I was asleep for most of the journey to the next town trying not to vomit everywhere and steadily sweating out all of the fluids consumed the night prior. When we arrived in Rockhampton I felt rejuvenated and ready for the days events. Our first stop was the local zoo, after seeing so much of Australia's wildlife actually IN the wild it was a bit strange seeing the animals caged up; it did give us a chance to see animals we hadn't yet seen like wombats and freshwater turtles as well as some animals not native to Australia (gorillas, monkeys, etc). They also had a few Casawaries (not sure the plural of that..Casawarys..Casawari?..dunno) which were exciting to see, because there are signs posted all along the roads in the rainforest and surrounding areas warning to be careful of Casawaries. They are endangered and also known to be quite aggressive so it says not to feed them or even go near them if you see any in the wild, but they were NO WHERE to be found in the wild. By the amount of signs posted one would think there were gangs of them roaming around beating up tourists. A highlight of the zoo trip was watching a little girl playing with a monkey behind the glass, making faces and running back and forth, it was very cute (I have a video).

After a delightful visit to the zoo, where for some reason we weren't allowed to have balloons (must be something to do with the birds?) we set off to our next stop which was a town called 1770. This was a very small and trendy looking beach side town, filled with beautifully designed houses over looking rocky beaches and scattered trees along cliff faces. We only stayed a few hours as Ingrid had previously expressed her desire to see the sea turtles giving birth on the beach in Bunderburg, known for sea turtles and rum.

We arrived in Bunderburg at night fall, not really sure of the time possibly around 10-11pm. We quickly found out there was a cost for viewing the sea turtles and maybe 70-100 people waiting to see them split in to multiple viewing groups; there was a long road ahead it seemed. Ingrid told us that this was one of her life long dreams to see the sea turtles giving birth, so she was determined to see them, Robert and I were a bit less enthused and didn't really want to pay to be taken to the beach and watch turtles giving birth. Not wanting to go alone Ingrid came up with a solution, we noticed that people were steadily leaving (mostly those with young children), it was getting later and later and the turtles didn't seem to be coming. So Ingrid, not being one to give any concern towards what is and is not socially acceptable behaviour, waited in the parking lot and began asking people who were leaving for their tickets. The first family she asked, consisting of 3 very tired looking children and 2 adults, a bit taken a back to say the least graciously obliged and gave up their tickets and told us to have a nice time; and wouldn't you know, they were in the very first group as well...+1 for Ingrid. After securing our GROUP 1 stickers we happily sat down with the rest of the people, watching a documentary on turtles and waiting to be called forward.

After watching two turtle documentaries, and a few discussions with some grey nomads and other families it was nearing 3am and some people had been there since around 8-9pm (Side note: we were also talking very loudly about how happy we were we arrived so early so we could get into the first group because we wouldn't want to be waiting around once the turtles arrived.). We were finally called up as a few turtles were starting to come on to the beach, the organisers brought us down to the beach to meet some of the marine biologists and volunteers watching over the turtles. To ensure the survival of the turtles they made sure the dugouts were deep enough to protect the eggs from predators and that they were far enough away so they weren't swept away by the tide. Ingrid was understandably quite excited, and expressed this by pushing passed the small children who were called to the front to get a better view, the marine biologist was not too pleased and repeatedly asked her to move back so the children could see, she was also running up and down trying to get the best view every time we moved, which I just found funny because I wasn't too concerned with the turtles I was actually more interested in how nice the stars looked.

Robert not being the biggest fan of authority figures, took it upon himself to slag off the marine biologist saying that we all paid and arrived early so we should all get the best possible view; also quite hilarious. The best part was when Ingrid was told off for trying to take pictures while the turtles were going back into the water, when the marine biologist specifically told everyone not to do that. He actually stood in front of her while she was trying to take pictures, and kept moving as she tried to get around him. As we were leaving, the rest of the group were now watching another turtle, the marine biologist called us back and made a point to tell us not to just wonder off and that we had to ask him before going anywhere, I could tell Robert was having no more of this guy so I apologised and asked him politely if we could leave. All in all it was an interesting experience, something that I don't think I will ever see again, especially considering these species are endangered and considering the current state of the earth, may not have many years left.

We stopped at a nearby park that night..when I say night I really mean morning, it was nearing 5am now, set up camp and got as much sleep as we could considering we would probably have to leave quite early before families started arriving with children to play in the park. Next stop Brisbane!

Peace & Love

A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (Dec 24 - Jan 2)

While in Cairns the previous weeks, I noticed that slowly more and more Christmas decorations were being put up across the city. If you've ever been away from the snow for Christmas, you'll know it is a very strange feeling. Sitting by the pool in 30+ degrees, not wanting to move too much is not what I'm used to and does not put me in the Christmas spirit. But, there could be worse things happening in my life at the time than not feeling very Christmasy because the city I'm in has beautiful blue skies and hot weather.

We decided to spend our Christmas in Airlie Beach, which is the launch point for all the Whitsunday Island trips. Coming into Airlie was quite nice, they have beautiful hill side homes with views of the sea and a nice winding road into a small beach side town, pretty standard look for smaller east coast towns but nice none the less. We stayed in a hostel called Magnums, which was the party hostel of Airlie, complete with big loud bar attached and McDonald's directly beside it. This was the perfect location for a nice relaxing holiday season. One of the first things we did was book a our trip to the Whitsunday Islands, we decided on a Catameran sailing trip and booked it for between Christmas and New Years.

After being in Cairns for so long and doing so much drinking, I was at the point where I just wanted to take it easy and really just relax over the holidays (holiday within a holiday, Relaxception). The room we were given was perfect for this, it was right at the entrance to the cabin area so everyone had to walk by to get in and out (you had to walk through the bar to get to where all the rooms were, and they were separated into 2 floor cabins). So I would just sit outside with a few roomates (Irish guys) and sometimes Robert, have a few beers and chat to all the people walking by. Depending on how many beers the Irish guys would drink the comments to the passers by, normally females, would get increasingly funnier and more inappropriate; at one point one of the guys was just yelling out "DAAYYYUUUMMMMMM" as girls went by. This continued on into the evenings and through the night, and as the passers by got more drunk the conversations and antics got much more entertaining. I witnessed all kinds of crazy antics out there, ranging from people puking after being spun around to domestic disputes to people trying cartwheels and other aerial manoeuvres.

*WARNING: The following story contains sexual acts please skip if you are easily offended. Thank you*

The highlight of sitting outside the room was on Christmas day. It was the night time and as usual we were sitting outside the room, having a drink and chatting to the people. By this point we had a few more people gathered than normal, some with their own chairs, and a big enough group that I didn't talk to the people on the other side of the circle because they were too far and had other people obstructing my view. As it was Christmas, there were quite a few Santa hats floating around, but there was only one guy (from Scotland) who had the full suit and beard, and as expected he was getting a lot of attention from the ladies. He was going in and out of the bar quite frequently, but eventually he settled in our group and joined the conversation.

There were two Canadian girls (Note: At first I thought they were from Alberta, but when I met them again in Brisbane I found out they were from BC..but thats not very important. Another note: The louder of the two girls kept calling the other one a rookie..this comes into play later) sitting directly across from me, but there was a high table that obstructed my view of their

faces a bit. Santa decides it would be a good idea to give these girls a Christmas lap-dance, so with the music from the bar blaring, he proceeds to grind on the first girl (the quieter one) and basically just stick his junk in her face. She's having a good time, laughing and what not, and playing a long a little bit getting a bit more involved with her hands. This goes on for maybe twenty to thirty seconds before Santa moves on to the next girl, and being the dominant of the two friends she obviously had to out do her friend. As he's dancing on her, she gets a bit MORE involved with her hands than the first girl, and after a while she just pulls out "Santa's little helper" and proceeds to go to town on him (I'm referring to fellatio for those who aren't following). This goes on for a few seconds before one of the Irish guys tries to get the dudes attention, to which he replies "SHUT UP IM BUSY HERE!" So here we all are sitting around on Christmas night while Santa is getting a blow job after a hard night of delivering presents. Merry Christmas indeed. I couldn't have made the story any better if I tried.

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We were meant to depart for our Whitsunday Islands trip on either the 26th or 27th (can't remember anymore), but when we arrived the spokesperson told us the weather was not going to be ideal for sailing so we had to reschedule. We decided on rescheduling to New Years because, there was no other accommodation available at the time and we had nothing booked, so it wasn't all too bad that we had to change. Being on a sail boat for New Years was a bit of a tricky situation, if there is a good group then it could be amazing, but if the group is bad and even worse the boat itself is bad, then there's no where else to go and you're stuck in a sucky situation. Also, all the people we talked to were saying that Magnums during New Years is the place to be and why were we going on our trip at that time, etc etc.. And the final thing that had us a bit thrown was we met a girl who went on the trip a few days earlier and she hated it, she told us all the beds were wet all the time, the food wasn't great, and it was just all around not a great time.

I think in the end this helped make the trip better, going in with such low expectations there was no way it could turn out all that bad; and it didn't. Aside from the captain of the ship being a bit of a dickhead, everything turned out alright, we had a decent mix of people on the boat and the cook was pretty hot so I didn't really care what the food tasted like I just chatted with her the whole time and told her to was good anyway. For the actual New Years Eve celebration, we just chilled outside and played some funny drinking games and had our own little countdown, including sparklers and flashing lights provided by the crew (who were not allowed to drink unfortunately).

The next night however, was not so civilized, for me at least. I'll keep it brief because I don't actually remember much, but all I know is we were playing a drinking game called ride the bus, and I got through two rounds and had to be filled in on the rest the next day. Apparently, I was getting quite loud and rambunctious, and found myself outside banging on the skylight window of the cabins telling people to open the windows so I could jump down. Robert said he asked me why I wanted to jump down instead of just go through the door, and I said because it was much cooler this way. After jumping down through the skylight I promptly jumped into the bed of one of the Swedish girls who was on the boat, we had been talking a bit earlier so I guess I thought this was the best opportunity to make my move. She stayed and cuddled with me for a while, but then it either got too hot oorrrrrr she realized who was with her and she left and went to sleep outside with her friends. The day after was one of those "How are YOUUUU doing today, har har har" kind of days, letting you know that you made a bit of a fool of yourself the previous day and everybody knew it except you.

Apart from the drinking and festivities we did actually visit the islands during this time as well. We went to White Haven beach, which was absolutely gorgeous, the sand was so white, and the water was blue it was amazing; first time on the east coast that it reminded me of the water on the west coast. We only spent maybe an hour or so at the beach, which was a bit of a shame because it took a while to walk there from the shore that we arrived on. But it was still worth it to go.

When we arrived back on land, I was feeling pretty ill, I couldn't even eat my McDonalds, but it serves me right. Anyway, we decided not to stay another night in Airlie and to headout that day on our way to Brisbane (next big city on the coast). We stopped in a random little town called Maryborough and set up camp for the night, we also tried to use the kitchen of a caravan park but got caught and kicked out. Thug liiiiiiife.

Peace & Love

Back on the Road: Mission Beach, Tablelands, Townsville (Dec 19 - Dec 23)

After three long drunken weeks, a diving licence and a few forgotten nights we (Robert, Ingrid and I) finally left Cairns. Rob stayed behind and got work on a banana farm in Mareeba so Ingrid decided she wanted to continue on with Robert and I. Initially Robert wanted to find a fourth person to join us, which he did but at the last minute he decided she wasn't the right fit for the group and so he told her she no longer had a ride on the day we were supposed to leave.. harsh reality of the backpacking world. He told her via text and she sent back a text a long the lines of "BUT I'VE ALREADY PACKED ALL MY STUFF AND EVERYTHING!"...womp womp womp... Honesty is not always the best policy when trying to secure a ride.

Anyway, we quickly forgot about the girl that was and began our journey down the east coast. Our first stop was Mission beach, we arrived at the beach rest area quite late and decided not to pay (as per usual) and just leave early in the morning. It was noticeably colder than Cairns eventhough it was only a few hours away, while there we met a group of French people. The one guy had been travelling for over 2 years (1 y ear Australia, 1 year Japan, and now back to Australia) and his brother and his girlfriend were starting their year long visas in OZ. Interesting thing about them was the guy that had been travelling for over 2 years didn't want to speak French at all, so he made his brother and his girlfriend speak in English all the time. Pretty uncommon among travellers who don't speak English as a first langauge to be speaking english with eachother with no English speakers around, but kind of cool, and a good way to practice. We chatted with them that evening, and they told us about some cool spots in the Tablelands (a region in land Queensland).

The next day we set off quite early to avoid getting caught by the campground owners. We did a couple of scenic walks in the area and ended up seeing some cool wildlife, most notable 2 pretty big goannas (no pics unfortunately, they are too fast and scared), and a bunch of HUGE spiders. The spiders were cool at first because the first ones we saw were off the path a bit, they were about as big as my hand, but then as we got deeper into the walk there were more and they were sometimes in the middle of the path. You had to keep a sharp eye or else you might end up walking into a spider as big as your face and that would be uncomfortable. Also, there were spider webs strewn across the path everywhere, so you had to walk with a stick in front of your face anyway to get the webs out of the way.

The walks themselves were very nice though, lush forest and a nice view at the end of both, well worth it. We continued on the the Tablelands after this, which was a very nice area, filled with waterfalls, wildlife and rainforest. We saw the Curtain Fig Tree, a fig tree that had another fig tree growing on top of it; quite impressive. We also saw tree Kangaroos (I think they got lazy with naming this animal, because it looks nothing like a Kangaroo, the only similarity is that it hops...but lots of things here hop), a Platypus (this was AWESOME, they are too fast to get any pictures, and when they are going slow its not actually a Platypus it was a swimming rat that looks like a Platypus). We had to go to a special place to see the Platypus, and we walked up and down the area for a long time (Ingrid was not pleased with this), but it was worth it in the end to see such a strange looking and rare animal. And as I said we saw LOTS of waterfalls, I won't go into too much detail about the waterfalls because there were so many, but the highlight was seeing the widest waterfall in Australia and Murray Falls, which was where we camped that night, but the falls were a bit of a surprise because we arrived at night. We could hear the falls when we arrived but we had no idea how awesome they were until we visited them in the morning, very powerful falls with a nice boulder-y backdrop (see pictures for wowness), there were a ridiculous amount of march flies though, when I got up in the morning my tent was covered in them and while packing the car I'm sure we let in at least 200.

After seeing the spectacular waterfall and almost being eaten alive by march flies we set off again and ended up in Townsville for the evening. We decided to stay two nights (Robert just slept in his car, Ingrid and I stayed in a hostel) just to chill out a bit and see a bit of the city. Didn't really do anything exciting just walked around, I got offered a job in a kebab shop.

Side story - Townsville: A Lively Nightlife

Robert got pretty drunk on the first night and almost got in a fight but ended up selling his shoes for $50 (he paid $20). This is a pretty funny story that started off with us getting free drinks from a couple of bosses (courtesy of Ingrid's flirting skills), they all owned other bars and were friends with the owner of the bar we were in so we scooped as many free drinks as we could. As the night progressed I slowed my drinking and Robert continued, he ended up making out with a girl in a cow dress (that was his pick up line too.. "You're wearing an appropriate dress for this bar" it was called the Mad Cow) and an older Asian lady whos boyfriend was somewhere else in the bar at the time. I decided to have an early night so I left Robert in that bar and went back to the hostel, before arriving I decided to grab something to eat. I stopped near the bar and was enticed by a $5 chips + gravy sign, my first thought obviously was, gotta have DAT poutine. Normally when somewhere offers chips and gravy if you ask for cheese on it they do it for free, because they think its so strange they just do it. I then go on to explain that I am Canadian and that it's something that started in Montreal and it's called a poutine and they should probably put it on the menu.

Anyway, I took my big box of delicious greasy goodness over to the club across the street and decided to watch the drunk people pile out of the club while I ate. This turned out to be an awesome idea, I saw all kinds of things, and girls kept coming up to me asking for some of my friends, I made a few of them do dances or tell me jokes before giving them anything. I saw all kinds of things while sitting outside, a few guys came out bloody, some were thrown out by 2-3 bouncers, eventually I saw Robert stumble out of this club so I called him over to sit down. We sat there for a while talking to all the people, we saw one argument between a homeless Aboriginal guy and a late 20s-early 30s Maori guy, at first the Maori guy was joking around a bit with the Aboriginal guy, but then suddenly something changed and all I heard was the Maori guy say something like "What do you mean this is your land? This is my land!" some kind of mad native argument, but he ended up shoving the Aboriginal guy over pretty hard and he hit his head on a wooden pole (made a really loud noise, and sounded really gross) and he started bleeding, while the other guy walked off. There were ambulance on the scene pretty swiftly, Robert was an ambulance driving for some time so he rushed over and helped the guy and told the ambulance what happened.

He then started to complain about all the people hovering around, saying they weren't helping so they should just go. Things settled down a bit after that, until this short Aboriginal guy came up to us, he first asked me for my shoes so he could get into the club, and offered me $50 for them.. seen as I paid $60 I chuckled a bit and declined. He didn't take too kindly to my chuckling, but he went ahead and asked me for some fries anyway, I obliged because I'm a nice guy, but then he sticks his whole hand in and is mad touching up my fries so I asked him to take his whole hand outta my food...blah blah blah etc...

Anyway, he then asked Robert for his shoes and he gave them to him for $50. I can't really remember how the conversation progressed after that, but the highlights are the guy telling us he was going to go look for someone in the club and bring them back out for his boss, and Robert threatening the guy (did I mention Robert is about 6'4 and pretty well built and the other guy was maybe 5'3 and a bit round) by gripping his shirt and telling him he's a muay thai fighter and he probably doesn't want to be drinking out of a straw for Christmas dinner. And the guy never ended up going in the club anyway! All in all a pretty funny night, and good times in Townsville.

Peace & Love

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza: Gilligan's First Ever Pool Party! (Dec 17 - Dec 18)

As my birthday was rapidly approaching I decided Cairns would be a nice place to spend the celebration of my 24th year. Also, there was much talk about Gilligan's (the hostel I was staying in) first ever pool party, which just happened to land on the same day as my birthday. So I had a nice time going around telling everyone that the pool party was actually my birthday party. The first night of my birthday weekend was not too different from other nights in Cairns, lots of drinking and going to multiple different clubs/bars. Except this time Julius was telling everyone it was my birthday (I did the same for him on his birthday), so I was getting lots of free drinks and other things... The next morning, the day of my birth, I woke up a bit hung over, but ready for the days events. I started drinking goon at around 11am, and quickly realized it was going to be a very messy day.

After drinking for maybe 2 hours, Julius and I decided to go get some food, so I grabbed my 1.5 ltr water bottle filled with goon and took a trip to Red Rooster. This was a pretty hilarious walk through Cairns, complete with telling random girls it was my birthday, and teaching Julius the "sober walk" which is basically the "I'm the Wiz" walk from Seinfeld, but done while drunk to show others that you aren't drunk at all and you are just out for a casual stroll around town. We returned to Gilligan's filled with food and continued to drink in anticipation of the pool party which would start shortly.

We headed down to the pool party right as it was starting so we didn't miss any of the awesomeness, by this point I was pretty drunk. At the entrance to the pool party we were greeted by hot girls in bikinis giving out the entrance stamps (Note: I thought it would be a great idea to bring my drivers licence so I could prove to people it was my birthday), I told them, as I did everyone else, that it was my birthday and flashed my ID to confirm. So they stamped me all over my body and let us in. We played in the pool for a while with some giant balls, trying to balance on them and other silly things, we also started doing flips off the stage they set up in the water for the bikini fashion show (still drinking goon at this point by the way). Then the bikini fashion show started, I'm not sure why but by this point I was the only one in the pool I assume my friends were sitting around the pool like everybody else. That wasn't for me though, I swam right up to the stage and proceeded to cheer on the girls as they walked past, nothing vulgar, mostly golf claps and compliments on their necklaces and shoes (like a sir), but I was standing right underneath them so that was funny. The models mostly just laughed and said thank you, I got a few winks though cuz I'm cool like that, I'm sure they could tell I was quite intoxicated.

After drinking and lounging in the pool for an hour or so after the fashion show I got back together with my friends and we headed back up to the room to continue drinking and get ready for the night. Before getting ready, I participated in two goon related activities, one was called the Goon Spin and the other we made a name for and it was Goon Shower. A Goon Spin is when you drink from the goon bag and spin around at the same time, you see how many times you can spin before you have to stop, I got up to six and almost fell when I stopped. The Goon Shower I actually have a video of this on facebook, one guy was pouring goon from the second floor of the hostel out into the common area, and he just yelled out GOON SHOWER, so about 6 of us lined up and awaited our prize. He poured out the goon on all of us as we drank and laughed, trying to get as much as we could in our mouths. It was pretty disgusting afterwards because we were all sticky, but it was a good reason to take a much needed shower.

I got changed and we started to play several different drinking games, this continued for some time, many games were played and too many drinks were had (by now I was at the point where I was wearing the goon box on my head and calling it a helmet). We then moved the party outside to join a larger group (at Gilligan's there are always people drinking outside.. ALWAYS), we played even more drinking games some new to me which made them even more difficult in my current state, which meant I had to drink even more. After a while we went back inside and were going to go out, unfortunately for me, I was too far gone at this point and just threw up, drank 2 ltrs of water and went straight to sleep. So I didn't even make it out on the night of my birthday... oh and it was only 10pm by this point...lightweight smh.. I did however sleep for 11 hours, so that was nice.

The lesson to be learned here is: party hard, and then party harder, it's only your birthday once a year. And I had a pretty successful one I must say.

PS - Luckily I didn't lose my drivers licence or my debit card that night, but they did end up being stuck together with gum some how.. which I obviously thought was awesome.. "Look one side debit, the other side ID! PERFECT"....

Peace & Love

Cairns II: Diving in the Great Barrier Reef (Dec 13 - Dec 17)

We arrived back in Cairns and proceeded to drink our lives away again for a few days. At this point I decided I should probably do something with my life so I booked a diving trip to get my Open Water diving licence. The first thing I had to do was 2 days of in class work, and learning to dive in a pool. My first time using the dive equipment I started to panic and found it very hard to breath, but I eventually got the hang of it and learned to relax and breath normally. It was a strange feeling staying underwater for 45 mins or more learning different techniques and safety measures, but very cool. We learned different hand signals for underwater animals (shark, turtle, clown fish, barracuda, barramundi, etc) and safety signals for emergencies. After the two days we took a test, just like any other certification like this our teacher basically gave us all the answers before and helped us throughout the test (my question sheet actually had all the answers circled on it already...bonus). We then hit the ocean to explore the Great Barrier Reef as newly certified divers. The first part of the reef we explored was Norman Reef.

It felt as though you were transported to another world. You float in the water waiting for the instructor to go down first, then put in your regulator (mouthpiece), deflate your BCD (life jacket kinda thing that fills with air and helps with buoyancy) and sink down into this unknown world below. Our first dive was only 25 minutes long, but still a magical experience. We saw a variety of different fish, including clown fish which seem to excite everyone, "OMG ITS NEMO AWWWW", and all kinds of cool looking coral. As it was our first dive we still had some signals and things to go over while under water. To do this our instructor found a flat-ish area and got us all to kneel down. She would point at us one by one and get us to do the skill or hand sign, one of the skills we had to learn was taking off our mask and then putting it back and getting all the water out (done but holding the top part of the mask and blowing through your nose while looking up).

After we finished our skills our instructor (Rocky, from Japan.. she was really awesome) took us around to see some of the different wild life down there. She had a whiteboard and a marker so she could write down what the things were that she was pointing at, very informative. The next few dives were very much the same, practising skills (cramp removal, regulator exchange, remove/replace weights, underwater navigation, and controlled emergency swimming ascent) and going around looking for cool things underwater. The next place we explored on the reef was Saxon Reef - Twin Peaks. Once we were finished all of our skills we got to buddy up and go on our first dives without a guide. This was an interesting experience, because we don't know the reef as well as the instructors. They know where all the good spots are and the best paths to take, so we were a bit lost. In fact, I lost my buddies twice and had to surface and wait for them.. I tend to drift into my own world and follow fish I find interesting or explore holes and things.

The first night I watched the instructors feeding the sharks off the back of the boat and stood there while all the advanced divers prepared themselves for the first night dive. I was intrigued by this and asked if I was able to do one of those, but I was told I'd have to take my advanced diving ticket to do that. At that moment I decided to do my advanced diving ticket, seeing all the sharks and giant traveli swimming around the back of the boat and the divers just jumping in on top of them, I knew I had to get myself into that situation. So I disregarded the money and just bit the bullet. Best idea I've had so far.

To get my advanced diving ticket I needed to complete a whole new set of skills, which was very exciting and fun. The first test we had to do was buoyancy, to pass this we had to swim through a hula hoop rightside up and upside down (and we did a spinning one for fun). When I did this I couldn't keep my buoyancy after going through the hoop and ended up doing a baseball slide on the bottom. One of the other guys in the course came in front of me and knelt down and gave me a safe sign like an umpire.. funny underwater joke. The next test was the night dive boat location test. This was what I was waiting for, and it did not disappoint. We jumped in the pitch black shark infested waters with our measly flash lights and were immediately engulfed in darkness. All you could see was the light of the boat and the little flash lights roaming around under the water. There were sharks everywhere, not paying any attention to us, just swimming around freely looking for things to eat. We saw three different types of sharks, White tip, Grey Reef, and Wobbegong. There were also giant traveli which were rather large black fish, they followed us around and when you point your flash light at a smaller fish they shoot out from over your shoulder and eat it (fun game to play was pointing at a fish near the reef, then when the traveli comes to eat it you move the light and listen for the thud of the fish hitting the reef). We also saw a giant mooring eel, and bioluminescent plankton in the water, so when you wave your hand around it lights up.

We had two more advanced dive tests, deep dive (diving down to 30 metres), where we saw a bottle being compressed by the pressure, the change in colour because of the darkness, and the instructor cracked an egg and we slapped it around for a while (it stayed together because of the pressure). As we went down an emperor fish followed us, because it knew we had eggs, so before we could play with the egg the instructor had to give it one so it would go away. We also saw a black tip reef shark, which they said was pretty rare to see. The next test, was a navigation test where we had to use a compass to find the boat and navigate through the water only using the compass. During that journey we saw, yellow fin barracuda, two types of puffer fish and another white tip.

The final test was a fun one, there was a choice between three different options (underwater photography, fish identification, or diving from a small boat). I chose to do the underwater photography, but my instructor said we can do the diving from the smaller boat and photography. So four of us jumped in a dingy and we zipped out past our normal area and we got to do a "marine style" entry to the water (hold on to your mask and regulator and roll backwards into the water off the side of the dingy). I felt quite awesome doing this, obviously in my head I was giving myself orders in a marine voice so that was exciting. On this dive I saw a few turtles, a white tip shark and heaps of fish and awesome coral.

After my first diving experience I was really starting to love diving. The feeling of staying under the water for so long and all the animals and coral you see was just breath taking. Imagine walking through a rainforest with twice as many animals running around, it might be similar to that. It also gives another element to travelling, now I can have a goal when arriving in a country, to do some cool diving spots! My next step is to do some wreck diving, that should be a thrilling experience.

Peace & Love

Cairns I: Gooned Up & Vacation from Drinking in the Daintree (Nov 27 - Dec 10)

Note: "Goon" is a slang term used for cask wine. It is the Aboriginal word for pillow, and its called that because you can take out the bag and blow it up like a pillow. That is how you get your "Goon Badge" drink a whole box to yourself then blow it up and pass out on it.... or so I hear...

The initial plan for me and Robert was to stay for 1 week, have a good time and then carry on down the coast. Rob and Ingrid were thinking of staying longer and finding work, possibly getting an apartment or going into a share house together. So we arrived and checked-in to a really nice hostel called Northern Green House (free internet, free breakfast, free BBQ on Wednesdays and pancakes on Saturday mornings ...amazing). We paid for 1 week and began our drunken debauchery, two more dutch girls moved into our room a few days after us so we partied with them for a while. Basically we were drinking at least two boxes of goon every night, then going out to the bar and dancing the night away (..might have just been me dancing).

I also met up with Julius while I was there, I met him through Matt, so he was hanging with us as well. The best place to go out in Cairns was definitely Gilligans, which was a hostel with around 700 beds and the largest club in Cairns at the bottom. After the initial week it was clear that we would be staying longer, so I decided to move to Gilligans hostel, for two reasons; it was cheaper and you get free entry to the club if you stay there. After moving to Gilligans I started to mainly hang out with Julius and whoever was in either of our rooms that wanted to party. I did do some other things while in Cairns, besides drinking everyday, after several days of drinking in a row Robert, Rob, Ingrid, and I decided it was time for a change, so we headed north for a few days of camping in the Daintree Rainforest in Cape Tribulation. This was a great idea. It was nice to get out of the city for a while and get back into nature.

We did a few walks through the rainforest, I felt it looked and felt pretty similar to what I saw in Costa Rica (obviously the flora was different, but I got the same feeling, just dense humid forest....not trying to downplay rainforests here..just sayin). On one of our walks we found a cool rope swing into a semi shallow stream, we got some nice pictures there trying to do backflips off the rope. It was so shallow that Robert, who is around 6'4 hit the ground one time and stood up straight away, he wasn't hurt it just looked really funny. We also visited Mossman Gorge, which looked very nice with a light fog over the water and big smooth boulders distributed throughout the river. The water there was very cold and crisp, it was the first time we could swim in the rivers for a while because of fresh water crocodiles in the Northern Territory, there weren't as many in the water here so it was safe to swim. We camped for one night in a caravan park (left early so we didn't have to pay) and stayed one night in a hostel. The beach and surrounding area of the hostel was beautiful, it was really like being in the middle of the jungle...which it was...There weren't very many other people staying at the hostel, but we met a group who were on a tour and hung out with them that night. There was a girl from near Manchester, a guy from Ottawa and another guy from Holland.

I can't remember the details of how we ended up at the beach, but after a few drinks we decided that it would be a good idea, even though it was raining. So we went to the beach and met some other people who were already down there, and we all watched as the storm moved closer. We sat there for a while, and eventually these other two guys showed up, pretty drunk already, and one of them brought his fire spinning equiptment. So as drunk as we all were, we all did some fire spinning that night, it was really awesome. He even showed us how to spit fire, and I got a cool video and some nice pics of that. The non fire spinning guy was a professional photographer so he had an awesome camera (we found out later that his main gig was doing nude photos, and he showed us some pictures he took of some girls in a bath tub.. he was a bit creepy..he also put a cicada in his mouth..). He still hasn't sent me the photos though, but the video is on facebook, I hope he sends me the pics eventually, they were pretty awesome. It was a nice end to our short visit to the Daintree Rainforest, back to Cairns in the morning.

Peace & Love