Domi­n­ique, Kat­rina and I left Sydney on another rainy day. The worst storm in 10 years had just hit the area and although we loved it in Sydney and at Benn’s place in Cronulla we all felt ready for a few days in the sun. We bought cheap sleep­ing bags, pil­lows, an air mat­tress and a pump for it, packed it all into Pump­kin and drove all the way up to For­ster, a tiny sleepy town about four hours north of Sydney. It might actu­ally be quite nice there dur­ing sum­mer, but in winter it is quite cold and there isn’t that much to do.

The next day, after sleep­ing in the back of the car at some river near For­ster, we were on the road again. We prob­ably took every tour­ist drive in between For­ster and Coffs Har­bour, our next stop. This is truly a great way to see Aus­tralia. If you stay on the Pacific High­way all the way up north you might as well fly. Tour­ist drives lead you away from the main roads and you get to see small beach­side towns, huge cliffs, amaz­ing beaches, small ser­pent­ines through moun­tains and even some whales. Well, more like the water sprouts really, but still! As we came close to Coffs Har­bour the drives seemed to get a bit con­fus­ing though. One just led us around in circles a few times and another ended in a car park in the middle of nowhere.

In Coffs Har­bour we slept for the first time in our tent on a camp­ing ground. It seems like a really nice place, but it being quite a harsh winter made us drive the next day up to Byron Bay. Here we had bril­liant weather for the first time really. Byron Bay is just lovely. We stayed at Broken Beach Camp­ing a bit out­side of town for three days. We actu­ally didn’t do much, except enjoy­ing life. The camp­ing ground was dir­ectly at the beach and we drank lots of beer, played beach vol­ley­ball and watched the sun­set. We went into town a couple times for a cof­fee and drove up to the light­house which is really nice, plus you get some great views from up there.

Our next stop was Surfers Para­dise on the Gold Coast. Both names raised our expect­a­tions quite high, but they were bit­terly dis­ap­poin­ted. It seems that there aren’t actu­ally any Aus­sies liv­ing there. There is just one big hotel next to another, with a few hol­i­day apart­ment build­ings thrown into it. To me it all seemed fake. The only thing you can really do there is drink and party. We met up with Cal­lum (you might have seen him in the Sydney video) there and did just that!

For the last week we have been in Bris­bane now. We decided against camp­ing and opted for a hostel and a (almost) proper bed. After a week now the same con­stant drunk, stoned and what­not people are start­ing to go on my nerves though. It seems there are loads of people whose only reason for trav­el­ling is being able to start drink­ing right after wak­ing up without being con­sidered an alco­holic. While this is fine for a short time, I find it annoy­ing that trav­el­lers do it week after week. Any­ways, we made a couple day trips as well while being here. The first one was to Bribie Island, an hours drive north. There we met up with Adam, a work­mate of Benns, we all had met in Sydney. We bought meat, shrimps and bur­gers, some salad and beer and had ourselves a really nice BBQ on the beach. We had invited one of our room­mates in the back­pack­ers, Nev, a soon to be law­yer from New­castle, to come along and we kicked around a rugby ball, had loads of food, walked around on the beach and watched pel­ic­ans and kangaroos. Then later in the day Adams dad invited us over to din­ner for some home cooked food and a lovely evening!

[SinglePic not found]A couple days later we went for the day to Nim­bin. Time prob­ably has not moved for­ward in that tiny altern­at­ive Hip­pie town since the 60s. You can get any­thing to do with weed in that little place. There’s a weed museum, cof­fee shops, old gran­nies try­ing to sell you cook­ies, quite aggress­ive young guys try­ing to sell you weed and sur­pris­ingly a lot of police as well. While it was nice to see the town I wouldn’t want to actu­ally stay there. But the drive there is just abso­lutely amaz­ing with quite a dra­matic moun­tain­ous land­scape, that made it worth­while going there all the way from Brisbane!

Tomor­row we are off to the Sun­shine Coast!!