Trip of a Lifetime

After spending a week in byron bay where I went snorkelling with sharks and turtles and hangliding I continued up to surfers paradise where i spent one night out on the town. Surfers paradise is basically just a party town like ibiza or somewhere in the med, it was good fun but not really much to see so i continued up to brisbane where i met up with my friend from new zealand. Spent the weekend in brisbane where i watched my first rugby league match since i've been here at the suncorp stadium which is a really cool big stadium capacity of 50,000. went round brisbane and checked out the museums and stuff but generally there wasn't much there. My next stop was noosa where i went on a canoe safari through the noosa everglades. It was a wicked couple of days and saw a view from the top of a sandpatch (which was more like a desert on the top of a big hill) that was spectacular. It isn't often you can see the horizon without seeing one man made structure or road but here you could see nothing but rainforests and the everglades. I also checked out autralia zoo whilst i was there and hand fed elephants and saw the croc show and all the other cool animals they had there like tasmanian devils and wombats and kangaroos etc. From noosa went up to rainbow beach where i went to fraser island from. Spen 2 nights on fraser island (the biggest sand island in the world) on a self drive cmaping safari where i got to see loads of dingoes and eagles and these big spiders with webs like walls! Also got to see sharks from the top of a cliff (the water was that clear) as well as manta rays and dolphins. Had a really cool group and spent the nights drinking goon. For those of you who don't know what goon is it is a poor excuse for wine that costs the equivalent of 4 pound for 4litres and is made of fish, eggs and various other dodgy stuff, it tastes horrid but is really strong and cheap so every backpacker drinks it by the bucket load!

Spent the last week travelling from Sydney to Byron bay learning to surf on the way

surfing is great fun and the surfer dudes party hard! saw some awesome beaches and loads of wildlife, saw dolphins surfing the waves (they sure put us to shame) saw a massive lizard called a goanna as well as surfing over sting rays, saw wild kangaroos as well

currently in byron which is such a chilled out cool place, will be travelling to nimbin and the gold coast/surfers paradise next

Still in Sydney at the moment, just finishing off a contract with hsbc doing system testing then i'm gonna start making my way up the coast to cairns doing fraser island, whitsundays, surfers paradise etc.

mainly been chilling but done some really cool stuff lately like watching my first super 14 game (which turned out to be quite a boring game) went to see the poms beat the aussies and clinch the one day series at the scg, another harbour cruise with my bar crawl company and went to mardi gras at the weekend (its celebrated by everyone over here and they make quite a big deal of it)

gonna be living in bondi for the next couple of weeks, about 5 minutes from the beach so i can't wait for that, gonna try my hand at surfing and become a surfer dude!

As I haven't been updating my blog as regularly as I should have done the following is a brief summary of my stay in Oz so far (it's not that interesting cos i've just been generally drinking and working).

When first arrived I was somewhat overwhelmed by the size of the city (Sydney) but soon found my way and grew accustomed to my new envirnoment. The first day was pent getting myself sorted and had a really cool moment watching the sunset behind the harbour bridge with the opera house in the forefront and the rest of the city to the side of me.

The next couple of days were spent looking for a job and accomadation, got plenty of interviews for the typical backpackers type jobs but only one of the, have i stuck with. That is a compnay called Route 69 which is a bar crawl company, my job is to sell tickets to backpackers then socialise and make sure they're OK on nights out which means I get free booze on the nights out and get to meet loads of new people - it's probably the best job in the world (except the money is completely commission based).

check out the pics on the website www.route69.org

I got a job as a door to door salesman for a charity agency but only turned up to the trial and didn't fancy it, the job I went for was selling tickets for a paintball company. The job was a laugh but again completely commission based but after a week of not selling one and then the boss not turning up one morning meaning I got up for nothing I never went back. Instead I got an office job with an Insurance company (not ideal but I needed the money) however, after just one week they laid me off for some mysterious reason which they never actually let me know about. Since then I have managed to get a job with HSBC system testing which I should be doing at the moment!

I've been to the blue mountains, bondi, coogee, manly, the olympic park (including the telstra stadium tour where England won the world cup and sat on Jonny's changing room spot), i met Monty Panesar in a club the other night although he didn't seem too impressed with me and my mate and cleared off very quickly!

Christmas eve was spent on a booze cruise through the harbour with 4 hours unlimited drink and cos it was with my bar crawl company I got this free! This meant christmas day was spent nursing a horrendous hangover and the christmas dinner consisted of ham, potatoes and onions with pepper sauce - certainly not what i was expecting!

New years was spent in the park waiting for the fireworks, we got there about 12 noon and spent 12 hours drinking and waiting for the fireworks and the area was crammed with people, when the fireworks finally came they were spectacular, once the firworks were oevr there was no way of finding as bar but we were all pleasantly merry and was quite happy to call it a night albeit the drunken walk home took about 3 hours when it should have only taken half hour!

Had another bar crawl for australia day which is a celebration of the ozzies independence from britain, they have a massive celebration and events went on all day and ended with another booze cruise round the harbour.

The final day in Fiji was spent nursing hangovers and so when we went to the Indo-Fijian area of the island the curry went down a treat!

The day was generally very relaxed although a few brave souls went diving in the morning despite being out all night the night before. After we got everyone together and had our curry we went to the natural hot springs and mud pools where we had a massive mud fight!

The evening was spent in a sombre mood as many of our group had split up today as it was the last day of the Feejee experience on the main land but for the rest of us Beachcomber awaited.

The next day we set off for the island of Beachcomber, the main party island in Fiji and it lived up to its reputation!

http://www.beachcomberfiji.com/

Massive nights out and some great snorkelling and beach activities were the highlight of the island. The dorm we stayed in was not so much of a dorm but a large open wooden building which slept about 130 people. Fortunately I was up on the balcony and so got away from the rat race that was on the ground floor and although there were many people the dorm was actually really quiet and by the point we were going to bed we were all too drunk to hear anything anyway! I spent 3 nights in Beachcomber partying and generally enjoying being on a beautiful Fijian island snorkelling and stuff before having to make my way back to the mainland to catch my flight to OZ. The final night was a quiet one as I had a very early flight and by that point I needed a good nights rest!