Evacuation of the Whitsundays

I was probably more shitfaced in Airlie Beach than any other place in Australia. When we arrived into Airlie Beach on the bus our female tour guide took us on a quick tour- “And here’s what we call the Shagoon” she said as she pointed to Airlie Beach’s lagoon. There is in fact no beach in Airlie Beach despite its name, so they have the ‘shagoon’ to make up for it. “There’s only one reason you will go down to the lagoon after 5pm guys, and that’s to spread your sperm. So if you meet a nice lady and fancy getting it on, head down to the shagoon!” She also gave us a quick tour of all the hostels. “Just don’t stay in Koala’s guys. If you’re booked in I advice you to go somewhere else, and if you’ve got no choice, then good luck.” I’ve heard many stories about Koalas, including one about a girl who went away on her Whitsundays trip, only to return to find her bag had been chewed right the way through by rats! Julia and I had a few friends who stayed in Koala’s and told us all about their pet mouse named ‘piss’, aptly named because their room stank of piss. When the cleaning lady came around one morning, she walked in, took a look round the room, and walked out. They asked her why their room smelt like piss. “This room alway smell like piss. It’s the carpet.” She replied. They had a TV, which apparently only had one channel, and the main problem with the hostel was bedbugs. Lots of them. If you stay in Koala’s I advise you to sleep on the floor in your own sleeping bag.

Airlie Beach is the main base for sailing the Whitsundays. It consists of one street with a few shops, bars and hostels, the lagoon, and a marina. We stayed in Backpackers by the Bay for our first night, which was a bit too far out really for our liking. It was a friendly enough hostel with an outdoor cinema but a fair walk into town. On our first night we had to do the 15 minute walk in bikini tops and shorts to go to the foam party at Magnums.


I had booked ‘Budget Sail’ and whenever anyone asked me what boat I was on their mouth would drop. ‘You’re on Budget Sail?’ they would reply. Yes. Yes I am. At the time of booking I had no money and I went for the cheapest thing available. Whereas all the other boats had pretty magestic names like ‘Pegasus’ and ‘Matador’, mine was called ‘Freight Train’. I imagined it to be pretty much what it said on the tin. When I got to the meeting point at the marina I observed the group of people I would be spending the next few days with; a couple of boys I could guess were English because of their orange tans, a group of 40 something Italian couples, two French identical twin sisters, a Canadian mother and daughter and a girl with a guitar. “At least we have the guitar for entertainment” I thought to myself. When we walked along the deck to the boat I could see people’s smiles drop with disbelief. The boat was rather modern but very small, and it seemed impossible that you could fit 15 people on a boat that size.

Now just before the trip I had bought some Travelcalm to deal with sea sickness- I had never realised I got sea sick until my best friend hired a boat for her 21st birthday and the swell was really bad. I felt so rough and when we got back to land I felt like I was still on the boat the whole evening. So just to be sure I popped a couple of tablets. ‘They might make you a little drowsy’ the pharmacist said. Drowsy was an understatement. Within 5 minutes of setting sail, I lay on the deck in the sunshine and effectively passed out. I was dead to the world and when I woke up I got the distinct feeling people were looking at me. Had I been drooling? We had moored next to a coral reef and it was time to go snorkelling. ‘Nooooooooo’ I thought ‘Let me sleep….’ Every time you get in the water in Australia you have to wear a stinger suit. It was stinger season and you don’t want to be stung by a box jellyfish; it’s extremely excrutiating and you’re more likely to pass out and drown from the pain before you reach the shore. You can even die from it.

So off I went snorkelling with childrens flippers on and two boys from Essex who I could imagine would take more time in the bathroom than all the girls put together. The snorkelling was pretty average; we were swimming along quite happily looking at the clown fish, when all of a sudden I was tapped on the shoulder. I was looking at a pretty cool fish at the time and nodded to signal that I had seen it. No. I hadn't. I looked up and coming towards us was the biggest beast I had ever seen. A Napolean Rass it was, but it was the size of a small dolphin and to be honest for a fish it looked like an angry bugger. I got the distinct impression that the boys were a little scared of the fish and we quickly swam in the other direction.


After that we helped to make dinner. Our hostess was a little bit over the top for my liking but she tried her best. One thing I’ll never forget was the amount of herbs she put in the food. That night we had herbs with spaghetti bolognaise on the side, with herbs and side salad. I watched her in the kitchen as she put literally a whole jar of herbs into the Bolognese, and poured a whole jar over the salad and the garlic bread. The following lunchtime she cooked chicken covered in 3 jars of herbs. I would sit there trying to blow them off my food just so I could see it.

The travel sickness tablets were still making me super tired, and combined with the goon, I couldn't stop falling asleep. We all sat on deck, watched the sunset and sang along to the guitar and I kept having people hit me over the head every time my eyes started shutting.

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Played Until My Fingers Bled

In Byron Bay I actually felt like I was in the Summer of 69. My favourite memory of Holiday Village was singing along to Swedish Andre playing Wonderwall on his guitar. He was so wasted and played so hard that his fingers actually bled!! He then went and lost the guitar on the beach in his blind drunkenness, only to find some randomer walking down the street with it at 3am.

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Skydiving in Byron Bay

You have to do at least one extreme sport in Australia- I booked the Byron Bay Skydive; it’s by no means cheap at $399 and if you want the photos it’s another $100 because they have to send someone else down to take the photos. The day we were to do it I woke up at 6:30am with a stonking hangover. I threw up one or two times before we were picked up at 7am, not through nerves but through sheer alcohol intoxication. It didn’t help that our lady driver couldn’t drive to save her life- we held on to the handles as she went over the lines on the road several times.

They are clearly prepared for the fact you may have to wait a long time- they have Giant Chess and Giant Connect Four, which kept me highly entertained. Why is it so much more fun when it’s in giant form??

I hadn’t really felt nervous before hand, but when we sat in the plane that’s when it hit me. We were doing the 14,000 feet jump since if you’re paying all that money you might as well do the highest one- but there were a couple of people doing the 8,000 feet jump. I couldn’t believe we had only climbed half way, but all of a sudden they were just SUCKED out of the plane. It was like something out of a bond movie, they opened the door and the two people were just kicked out of the plane- it actually made the sucking noise too. Oh god, I thought.


I can describe the feeling of Skydiving but you’ll never understand it till you try it. We rolly polied through the sky and my heart literally jumped out of my chest, but then, when we finally came straight the free-falling was amazing. You don’t feel like you’re falling because the air and the wind is pushing you up, but it doesn’t feel like you’re weightless either. People get addicted to skydiving, trying to make the feeling of free falling last longer each time. Usually people are too excited and the thrill too big that the feeling seems to last only a few seconds. But it was different with me- I’m so tiny I only way 45 kilos, and my tandem instructor was only a small man himself, so our combined weight was only light. So instead of free falling for one minute, it was more like two. I didn’t understand at the time, but the woman with the video camera skydiving at the same time kept holding out her hands to me. I wondered what the hell she was doing, so I held my arms out like I was flying, copying her. It turned out she was trying to get me to hold her hands so we would fall more quickly if we were heavier, but silly me didn’t realise that.

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Nimbin- Hippy Heaven

Another thing you must do when you’re in Byron Bay is go to Nimbin. There are a couple of tours that go to Nimbin if you want something a bit cheaper, but Jim’s Alternative Tours is by far the best. On a rainy day, we all boarded the second oldest bus in Byron Bay. For the second oldest bus it had a damn good sound system, which completely overcame the fact that the door was hanging off. I wish I had asked for a copy of the CD he played because it was a damn good compilation- 'the lime and the coconut' being my favourite track. Our driver was a true hippy, complete with long grey hair, tie dye pants and a t-shirt that had so many stains on it you could tell it hadn’t been washed in years. He told us stories of his drug taking antics, about how his wife had a natural birth with the incense burning, how he stopped a multi billion dollar corporation with a protest...this guy was the real deal. Now everyone knows that you only go to Nimbin because you wanna eat the hash cookies and he warned us of the dangers of eating too many cookies. He told us about these kids who ate all four cookies because they didn’t feel like anything was happening. “They were rolling on the floor of the bus, shouting “take me to hospital, i'm dying, take me to hospital!’ It turns out no-ones ever died of a weed overdose, but you just have to let it run its course.


Nimbin as you might have guessed is a hippy town, full of brightly coloured clothing, hemp cafes and organic food. It's worth taking a look around the museum, which openly campaigns for cannabis to be a legal substance. It's a museum full of bric-a-brac, collages, slogans, art work and bumper stickers promoting cannabis. The Nimbin residents run into a lot of problems with the police, which is a little ironic really considering they are the most harmless people who are trying to do good for the planet.

It was pretty easy to get cookies when there's a woman walking down the street saying "Hash cookies anyone?". Just make sure you don't get fooled by some kid who bought some chocolate chip cookies from Woolworths though. You get four for $20 but we just split one and eat half each because we'd been told that's all you need.

The problem with cookies is you don’t know when they’re going to affect you. We sat there and waited…and waited and stared out of the window of the bus at the rain just waiting to feel stoned. But nothing. An hour and half later and Jo said to me, ‘I feel really weird’. Great. Jo’s stoned and I’m not. I assumed if she was stoned then I must come next, but nothing happened. The bus ground to a halt in the middle of the rainforest; Paul Recher’s Hippy Heaven it turned out to be. We piled out of the bus into this weird hippy garden, where all this junk was oddly arranged, TVs, golf clubs and household items which all looked so out of place in the middle of the rainforest. I turned round to Jo who looked deathly pale and didn’t say anything. They made us walk through the rainforest to get to the house, and suddenly the heaven’s opened.



We were trekking in flip flops through the marshy wetland to get to some random guys house and we were getting soaked. I was not impressed. Then suddenly I felt something. Stuck to my foot was a brown, slimy leech, which was feeding off my right foot and growing bigger by the second. “AAAAAAHHHHH GET IT OFF ME” I lamely cried!! Jo get it off me!! Get it off! I tried to knock it off but it was hanging on like its life depended on it. Jo just stood there and did nothing. “Jo! Help!” Evetually after a 15 second delay she grabbed it off my foot. “Oh yes” Paul shouted from in front “Mind out for any leeches!” Now you tell me. In the clearing stood the hippy house on the lake and we were all invited in to sit on his porch and eat watermelons and crack nuts. It truly was weird. ‘I thought I was hallucinating’ Jo said. ‘I thought I was imagining things and I thought if I tried to get the leech off you people would think I was crazy or something.’ We sat there for a while in complete silence; me waiting for the weed to kick in, and Jo like a zombie.


I don’t think a rainy day was the best time to eat the cookies. When I got back to the bus I decided to eat another half as we set off for the waterfall. Then all of a sudden without warning, this smile spread across my face, like it had taken over my face and there was nothing I could do about it. They say if the wind changes your face will stick like that, well mine certainly was stuck. Without reason to laugh we both just started giggling hysterically. So I was stoned. I don’t remember much after that; I remember refusing to get off in the torrential rain to see the waterfall and falling asleep. I remember getting back to the hostel and not being able to move my arms and legs to walk across the road. And I remember being paranoid that everyone was looking at me and that Jo was some sort of evil bitch out to get me. Everything seemed to be in slow motion; I know we went to eat everything from the BBQ that the boys cooked, including about five kangaroo steaks. And I know that I Kept stroking an imaginary friend next to me. We definitely weren’t going to be going on a night out, I had to go to bed I was that paranoid. I lay on the top bunk of my bed CONVINCED that I was going to fall off and die, so curling up into a ball in the middle of the mattress.

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Byron Bay- You'll Never Leave

Fancy yourself as a hippy wearing flares and a tie dye top? Want to hand out flyers and save the world? Fancy a sing song on your guitar? Then Byron Bay is just for you. There are still traces of its hippy days but these days Byron is bustling with cafes, jewellery shops, hostels and bars.


Byron Bay is in my opinion the best place in Australia- its relaxing hippy vibe combined with the amazing nightlife make it the ultimate backpacker destination. Byron is one of those places you'll have heard of before you even get there. It's a small town on the most easterly point of Australia, with one main street which leads down to the beautiful surfing beach.

Cheeky Monkeys is famous for being one of the best nights out in Australia- where else can you dance on tables, get $5 meals, win prizes by putting clothes pegs on your face or get involved in a topless twister competition? Not to mention the flashing cups. So go along, 'have a feed' and join in the raucus rowdy atmosphere- it's where every backpacker ends up.

It is worth a word of warning though- at peak times around December to March Byron Bay can get very busy and hostels get booked up well in advance. We were lucky because Oz experience have a deal with Holiday Village which is the best hostel for partying, although I've hard the Arts Factory is also pretty damn good. Holiday Village has free surf boards too so you can make an absolute fool of yourself trying to practice your skills after surf camp.

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Top things to do in Sydney

1. Climb the Harbour Bridge- Climb 134 metres above ground to have the best view of the Harbour. Choose the time of day you want to do it for the best experience. Would you like to see the view in the full light of day or at night to see the twinkling lights of the city skyline? Or would like to do a dawn or twilight climb? Whatever you choose, the bridge climb is an essential on your to do list.
2. Do the Skywalk at Sydney Tower- Experience the ultimate thrill at 260 metres above ground. Dressed in protective clothing and attached to a safety harness, you will venture across the glass-floored viewing platform for unique panoramic views of the city.
3. Do the Bondi to Coogee walk- For a little excercise and a scenic coastline walk, start in Bondi at Icebergs Hotel and follow the cliff round to Coogee to see some of Sydneys best beaches.
   
4. Take the ferry to Manly- No visit to Sydney is complete without taking the 30 minute ferry ride to Manly.
   
5. Go on a trip to the Blue Mountains- The Blue Mountains Heritage Site is one million hectares of forests, sandstone cliffs, canyons, waterfalls and bushland.
   

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All Aboard!

I boarded the Oz experience bus on a rainy grey day in Sydney. I have this theory that there is a government conspiracy to make people think it's always sunny when actually it's not. Advertising and media coverage would have you believe that everyone sits on the beach topping up their tans and their lives are like in Home & Away or Neighbours. When in fact it rains. A lot. My Mum called me to ask if I was OK because there were bush fires in the news. "No, Mum. That's in Melbourne, I'm in Sydney." In fact all I'd heard about was rumours that there were no buses running between Brisbane and Cairns because of flooding. I'd met some people who had actually flown into Cairns to start their East Coast trip, and had to fly down to Sydney and do it the other way round. "Don't you know its the wet season?" the locals ask when I tell them I wasn't expecting rain. "Of course bloody not!! In England we assume you all have BBQs in the sunshine, cuddling koala bears and wrestling crocodiles!"


The Oz experience bus i pretty eye catching alright with its bright yellow colour but it's pretty comfy with leather seats and air conditioning. We were quickly dropped off at the main office to collect our passes and then we were on our way...there was no going back. They like to encourage you to get to know each other on the bus, and you have to play a sort of musical chairs, where when you hear a certain song come on you have to walk around the bus untill it stops, then sit in the first seat you can find and talk to the person next to you. I have no idea what we talked about now, but I can imagine it fitted the usual backpacker formula of "Where are you from, are you finished uni/going to uni, how long are you travelling for etc etc?"

I don't know how many times we stopped, but at every stop it was the same "So here we have a McDonalds Cafe, there's a Hungry Jacks or a Subway...." We were SICK to death of fast food. Isn't there anywhere with real food?? Apparently Australia is one of the most obese countries in the world, and although I only saw skinny people, I can now imagine why that is. It's probably worth mentioning at this point the names issue in Australia. "Hungry Jacks" is Burger King- god knows why they changed the name for Australian people, but apparently they would be much more receptive to Hungry Jacks than they would be to "Burger King". They have some weird names for fast food places, including "Red Rooster" and "Chicken Treat". Can you imagine suggesting going to Chicken Treat for dinner? It sounds like you'd get a bit of a shock... I was also surprised that their main supermarket is Woolworths, because in England Woolworths has gone bust in the credit crunch.

We stopped at a Koala Hospital for a bit of a break, which is full of rescued Koalas needing treatment, and they even have their own Koala Ambulance. Many of the Koalas are suffering from "Chlamydia" and like true juveniles we all chuckled to ourselves every time we heard it. In koalas it causes urinary tract infections and incontinence, so they end up with a condition called "wet bottom". Nice. No-one will ever forget the lady who worked there, who had blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick and looked as if she had really walked out of Neighbours. I wanted her to be my grandma. She was so passionate about the Koalas, and even did the Koala mating sound for us.

Our destination was Surf Camp. It is mysteriously located at Spot X so I can't tell you where it is, but the surf lesson is included in the Oz Experience trip. You have to pay a local payment of around 50AUD for your food and accommodation but at least you get the lesson for free. We were allocated cabins, which all looked exactly the same, and boys kept "accidentally" walking in on us getting changed. We were herded like cattle to get our gruel like in a scene from Oliver and then we all gathered round a camp fire with our goon for a bit of a sing song. One of the instructors of course was an 'aspiring musician' and continued to sing badly on his guitar and promote his 'CD'. It's amazing how, even if they are completely unnattractive, instructors in any discipline soon become sex gods. Girls were sat on the floor right in the instructors face like true groupies.

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Oz Experience v Greyhound

I was to travel around Australia by bus, which is the best way to travel if you're by yourself and want to meet people. I did it with Oz experience, but you can travel by Greyhound as well, which is like Oz experience without the social part and without the added stops and activities along the way. Oz experience won me over with the promise of a goat rodeo, barefoot lawn bowls, surf camp and a crocodile farm. They have a variety of routes available; I did the Dazza pass which goes from Sydney to Cairns and included the 3 day Ayers rock tour. You buy your pass, then book your buses on the live online system, or alternatively over the phone. You can change your buses at any point, but if you miss a bus there is a $50 fine. Every time I mentioned to anyone that I was travelling by Oz Experience, they warned me of the bad things they heard, but I had a brilliant time. The only time where people came unstuck is if they don't book their buses and then when they want to leave the buses are all full. So book a little in advance and you'll be fine. The drivers a pretty helpful and can book you on any excursions you want to do, and you tend to bump into the same people on the buses which is quite nice as you make some long term friends. There are some perks too- in peak season the party hostels tend to be all booked up, but Oz experience have special deals with them and can usually get you a room.

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Drunk in Manly

My Aussie friend Abbie is perhaps one of the drunkest people I have met. At Oktoberfest she was photographed wearing her sunglasses and Aladdin pants on a drip in hospital. I met Abbie in Portugal and this time I arranged to meet her half way around the world in Oz. I was supposed to be meeting her at the Opera House, but was running rather late. The bus over from Bondi Beach had taken a lot longer than I anticipated and then I couldnt go out without having a shower. "Where are you?" she texted. I lied and said I was walking down Macquarie street right at that moment. Instead I was still trying to brush the knots out of my hair. I ended up paying the money to take the train to circular quay, which is only about 2 stops.


When I finally got to the Opera bar Abbie was rather tipsy already. If there's one thing you do in Sydney you must go for a glass of wine in the Opera bar and catch a view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House at sunset. In my opinion half of the worlds sights are best seen at night. I was glad I hadnt gone in my typical backpacker gear- everyone is so glamorous at the Opera Bar- full of suits and dresses and clinking of glasses. We shared a bottle of wine or two and suddenly realised we hadn't really eaten anything so the wine had gone straight to our heads. Already drunk, we went to this restaurant called City Extra on circular quay, where the table cloths and the menus are newspapers. How novel. The waitress could tell we were all rather tipsy but Abbie in particular looked a little boozed up. "Are you OK?" she asked politely. "I'm a little bit drunk." Abbie slurred. "I can see that..." she said "...the Schnitzel will help."


The following day we took the ferry over to Manly, one of Sydney's top seaside destinations. It's a scenic trip and only about 8 dollars return, which is well worth the money. Manly is quite a touristy town and the long narrow beach full of families, but it has a welcoming laid-back charm to it. Abbie and I walked along the sand trying to avoid the bluebottles that had been washed up on the shore- they're the tiniest little buggers but you wouldn't want to experience their sting. It's true that everything in Australia is dangerous, its the most inhospitable country ever. We met up with Steve, whom I also met in Portugal and who continuously has bloodshot eyes, and his friend Brad. After about half an hour in the roasting heat, someone piped up; "fancy going for a beer?" We went to Wharf bar and one beer turned into two beers which turned into three. Later Cam joined us; Cam had been with them on the trip through Europe, but had run out of money before he could make it to Portugal, which is a damn shame because Portugal may be my favourite place on earth. I could soon see where all his money had gone; on booze. Brad spent most of his time trying to work out whether the bartender's boobs were real or fake, which in the end we decided were real. The strange thing about Manly is that no-one who lives there really ventures outside of Manly. A bunch of girls walked in dressed up to the nines and I heard one of them say it was her first night out into Sydney.


Eventually Cam went outside and wasn't let back in, so at 5 o'clock we were walking through the streets pissed, with Cam and Brad crouching with their bums in the fountains, and trying to climb lamp posts. We ended up at Brad's house listening to him play the guitar and put on his "Kings of Leon" voice which I have to say was pretty impressive. He was desperately trying to avoid texting a girl he'd met but you could see him itching to pick up his phone. A while later he disappeared into the house and came out with his housemates laundry. Rifling through them, he thought it would be fun to try on her sass and bide jeans and a black croptop. Now this was the result....

I've always found that men secretly enjoy in some way or another wearing womens clothes. Not satisfied with their own, they have to try on ours under the disguise that it's 'fancy dress.' They pretend not to enjoy it, but I could tell Brad quite fancied himself in his housemates Sass and Bide jeans. "Maybe I should wear them out..." he joked. Instead of taking the ferry back, Abbie and I were persuaded to go on a night out in the city, so off we went in a taxi to Sydney with a man in girls jeans to watch some band play at the Macquarie hotel. What's funny is nobody even noticed that they were girls jeans, so he had to walk around pointing them out to every girl that moved.

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