National Lampoons: Road trip to Broome

A great band once sang ‘go west life is peaceful there’ so I have and below is what has happened so far.

My next stint across the great land that is known as Australia is my road trip from Darwin down to Broome this again is quite a large distance which will take over 20 hours but is only an inch on the map, and for this I have recruited a new face for the journey: Bob from Holland who looks a bit like Dirk Kuyte….fortunately for me I still had two of the old new gang still with me although I do think it is because of the cheapness of the travelling and not my company or wit that has kept them with me however I was excited about Western Australia which covers 1/3 of Oz and is 10x bigger than England as I have been told it is much more relaxed and the majority of the backpackers are older so fingers crossed. I am now about half way around the ‘big loop’ here and am on time however I do need to take some more time to get to Perth as it is starting to get cold and I know I have been moaning about the humidity and temp in Darwin and the North but I just had rain today all day (16/5) and it was a stark reminder of how depressing rain and clouds are.

The theme for this trip was camping so to enable me to spend less money with that I took the girls down to B W (sort of like a super Woolworths) to get the camping gear they would need also giving them the advice I had been given earlier on my travels however this fell on death ears when it came to paying a little bit more but more on that latter. There are many places to camp throughout Australia whether it be in a free rest stop, in a national park or in a camp site so I left Darwin without a plan of where to stay compared to the Alice trip where everything was planned to the last detail this either makes people more excited or scared but being a professional non planner this was like second nature to me so I reassured the team that “all would be well and what’s the worst that can happen” to which the girls thought that those words must have been someone’s last words.



The first place we stopped was Litchfield national park which is around 2 hours away and is on par with Kakadu but is more assessable with 2WD again this is a problem as many of the best places to visit or roads to drive are not sealed or have rivers cutting through them so a 4WD would be amazing to have as I would be able to go anywhere but this would bring its own hazards as we are quite safe on the highway but on unsealed roads with no reception and a broken vehicle is the difference between life and death. It does seem like all the national parks have the same thing but I decided that this road trip I would take longer and see more instead of constant driving so we visited the water falls, rock pools and swam in the billabongs which were croc free for the day, many of the falls have swimming and many people decide to climb to the top and ‘tombstone’ into the water below however this is not my thing as people don’t often know of the hidden rocks and they end up paralysing themselves so I opt out of that same reason I didn’t get a Thai Massage in Bangkok I like my back working if its not broke don’t try and fix it. Litchfield is a very dry place sparse of green and is full of termite mounds, thousands cover the site and they range in sizes from traffic cone size to 10 meters tall. Litchfield is a relatively small national park when compared to its sister Kakaduu it’s only the size of Ireland.







After a refreshing swim the girls and Bob had their first taste of ‘camping’ and the advice I gave them to buy a 4 person tent for the three of them now seemed a good idea well worth the extra 10 bucks, the only way to describe the three of them in their three birth tent was like fat guy with thong on (cramped). The camping was cheap only $6.60 each which we didn’t even need to pay as the ranger did not come round, the only thing I can say about camping though is that it is boring as you generally have to set up camp before nightfall then eat by then its 19:00 and there is not much too do unless you have booze or the Swedish National Bikini Team in the next site so camping is a bit boring. After we left Litchfield we busted through the boarder from Northern Territories into Western Australia…well less busted more searched and checked: drugs, illegal immigrants, booze, pornography, dead hookers in the boot, Rolf Harris DVD’s I hear you ask………NO!! There is much worse contraband around like fruit, honey, vegetables’ and seeds stuck to our flip flops, I honestly thought that I was going to be cavity searched it was that serious, however the Dutch guy was not too bothered but he is Dutch after all……is jam ok is marmalade safe shit is my nutella safe swirled in my mind oh my god it reminded me of Bali airport where the death penalty is mandatory for being a mule, I am surprised they didn’t have sniffer dogs specially trained to find the deadly egg plant or highly toxic sunflower seed! Well Mr Jobs Worth he didn’t check every bag and we had two bananas, we are surely on Australia’s most wanted right now and I can expect them to make the next series of Underbelly* about this incident…….Underbelly: The man from Del Monte – International fruit smuggler




Driving these long distances people do not understand how tiring it can be as I do not have the luxury of closing my eyes for 5 seconds let alone the ¾ of the journey the rest of them close their eyes while the rest of the time they read their books so when I drive a stint of 10 hours when I get to the campsite set up the tent cook dinner I am exhausted and generally want to go straight to bed but when I do I get called antisocial or grumpy. In the last blog I commented how the people I travelled with have to go to the car umpteen times in the night to get stuff they have forgot so with me going to bed at 18:30 I decided to let them have the car keys a move I later regretted and the only way to describe it is like in the story Pinocchio where he becomes a real boy and goes to the carnival and runs amok the boot which was 3 feet away from my tent must have been opened at least 25 times with the last being at 02:00 WHAT THE HELL DO THEY WANT AT 0200??? I didn’t even ask as it would have been something ridiculous. In this second camp ground we got to camp 50 feet from freshwater crocodiles which we got to see being fed but don’t worry the Australian says they are only freshwater they wont attack……..Its a bloody crocodile I don’t care if it prefers salt or freshwater if its got more teeth than the Jackson family then I don’t want to camp near it without rangers with 12 gauges guarding me! Lucky for me one of the girls is always happy-go-lucky and accommodating to my moods and it’s never long before I get brought around with her 24/7 happiness. When driving long distances with out any stimulating conversation (e.g. “Start a conversation” Jess: “I ate 7 kiwis once and was sick….but I don’t blame the kiwi”) you start to think a lot and I think I might have worked out why I am not having the best* time during the last few trips, its because I have not met a ‘mate’ and I don’t mean making noises or flapping my coloured feathers I mean a mate like Jay and Eddy in Thailand or Geoff and Gav in India or Hally/Jess/Tony/Nea in Cammy B or John/Oli/Tim in East coast I need that person you can have a crack with who is much like you……….I need to meet some English! *With that said the girls are quite good to travel with and Jess will probably carry on travelling with me until Perth so I can’t be all bad and I am having a good time experiencing a different kind of travelling.




The next day Colombo Sherlock and the doctor from Diagnosis Murder decided we should only drive 3 hours to Kunnuroo and camp there so we can go to a Rodeo cue whip crash sound and ‘yea haa’ We explored everything Kunnuroo had to offer with its markets and town centre so with 25 minutes wasted we went back to the camp site and the girls and Bob went to swim where I tried to have a well earned cat nap. Another problem with camping is that you cant get into the tent in the day and sleep its like walking into a pre heated oven (fan assisted) so I laid the sleeping foam mat on the grass and tried to get a couple of hours before the big event that night well after 20 minutes of broken sleep I awoke thinking I was on a slip and slid mat I actually had to shake the mat of my sweat so with that feeling dizzy from losing half of my body water I went with the others to the pool to cool down which is where I met the first English person who was half decent the first since the Whitsundays. The Rodeo was everything you would expect line dancing bad clothes and the smell of cow pat and that was just us! The speaker on the tannoy was incoherent much like the tannoy on the tube stations so we had to get the jist of it ourselves how long can the man stay on the bull and to be fair they were not that good see I have stayed on the mechanical bull for a good full 120 seconds on the ‘shit scared’ setting so I was not that impressed when a lot of them fell off 3 secs after the gates opened 1 second before I got the camera recording! The event was full of the people you would expect but it was a good night and well worth $15.






That night was a washout no not the Rodeo but it rained all night and I forgot to put the water cover on the tent so I was in the car and the other three stayed in their leaky tent….alas our love affair with camping ended with that night and had to beg and seduce the manager of the next stops motel to drop his $50 buck a night each to $35 which she did so we could have a bed. With a room to ourselves we charge up the million electrical items every backpacker/flash packer has, lucky for us the motel has a multitude of plug sockets unlike the bloody hostels which have a measly 2 sockets for 8 people. One thing I have noticed about the West Coast is that there is so many French people this maybe because we are camping but I am getting quite concerned about how many there are as they tend to be the rudest…..however there are no English people seeing one is a unusual as it seems to be French and German.



Before Broome we went to Geikie National park to see its gorge which was a 2 hour trek then along the river bed where we got to see more crocs……see photos below but really it is pretty much the same thing in Australia and the drives are becoming less rewarding as I have seen all this before in every other state the only one I think that might be quite different would be Tasmania but we will see.









We finally got to Broome and the caravan park that I was recommended as it was very social we were told by others that it was disgusting soooo we ended up on another campsite which was cheaper so it all worked out in the end. The trouble with me getting to Broome was the one thing I wanted to do was the ‘staircase to the moon’ which I could have missed by a day and would then have to wait a month for the next one but luckily I only have 10 days to wait so figuring I will never be here again I will chill out for 10 days here reading and relaxing so I can see this wonderful event.

Broome is famous for its 80 mile beach called Cable beach, this beach is one of the nicest I have seen it has white sands and azure sea its famous for its sunset and for the low tides at full moon where the moon reflects on the mud flats and creates the illusion that there is a stairway to the moon. Stinger season is just about ending so unlike Darwin we are actually allowed to enter the sea. Broome is a very small town but has some cool little cafes and bars but it is very expensive here, I am expecting that the entire places bar Perth on the West Coast will be expensive as it is much less built up compared to the East.





Some of the activities coming up in the coming months will be: Fruit picking, swimming with Whale Sharks, cage diving with Great Whites and skydiving but with 10,000 km clocked up and 13,000 more to go there is still much more to tell.

*To my English chums Underbelly is the only good show to come from this place as it portrays famous Oz criminals in a glamorous light.

Enjoy work everyone

My theory of evolution

Darwin what is there to say about the capital of the Northern Territories the sea is a no go area thanks to a year long supply of box jellyfish and if they don’t get you then the saltwater crocodiles will eat you the beach is lovely and the sunset is even more gorgeous overlooking the Timor sea but beyond that there is not really a great deal to this hot and humid place, it reminds me of a holiday resort with people rarely moving past Mitchell Street (Bar Street) or leaving the confines of the swimming pool during the day. A scouser in my room (reminds me I should check my stuff is safe) has literally only been 4 doors down in either direction from the hostel and asks me every morning if I am going to the pub with him. Darwin has a multitude of nights that take all shapes and sizes from ‘Tits out Tuesday’ to ‘Ladies night Thursday’ and I think this is one of the reasons I have decided to hold off looking for a job here that and the fact its quite hard from what I have seen, people are literally on the breadline with their last few hundred dollars looking for work as their flight home is in 6 months time and if they are not getting work no one is. I have got the car full again and am embarking on a more camping style trip through Litchfield national park and the Kimberley’s towards Broome however I am wondering how this will go down with two of the girls from the last road trip I give it one night before I hear the nagging/moaning/complaining/fault-finding about camping.







With not a lot happening in Darwin I have instead put a funny observation that every backpacker can relate too.

Say what you will about people who play guitar on a backpacking trip, but there is no denying: IT IS A PLOY*.But wait, there are people that just really love music. Some of them can play guitar and they want to share their talent with the world. I don’t believe it for a second. Not while backpacking. Carrying a guitar around while traveling is a huge hassle. Who actually travels with a guitar? It immediately puts you into excess baggage everywhere. They are fragile, and temperature/humidity sensitive. They do it to get laid.

It works. I’ve seen it. So has every backpacker. Some dude whips out a guitar at a beach/campground fire or in a hostel common area and proceeds to strum some of the lamest shit detectable by the human ear. Nevertheless, because most girls love musicians and manage to overlook the ugliness (or fatness/dreadlocks/dirtiness/awful hipster style) of supposedly talented (or, in other cases, wealthy) men, these guitarists indeed kill women softly… with their song. It’s a classic case of guys batting out of their league (i.e. score girls who would otherwise ignore them completely). It’s unlikely, but it happens. It’s similar to how Tottenham beat Arsenal recently.



While the perpetrators might not be wearing ski sweaters, they offend with covers of the usual suspects: Ben Harper, Newton Faulkner, Jack Johnson, Bob Marley, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, RHCP, Nirvana, Radiohead, Oasis (esp. “Wonderwall”), James Blunt, etc. (I left out John Mayer and Santana because usually the dickheads can’t figure out the tuning.)




The best part? The guys’ game faces as they belt out the lyrics, often with their eyes closed. Priceless.

Some of these guys, however, don’t even play well. For example, there’s that scene in Role Models where the one guy brings a guitar on the camping trip and starts playing a song, only to screw it up, stop and start over again repeatedly. (In between each song is a healthy beenou about how “my band back home puts on one hell of a show.” Well sir, I have news for you. It doesn’t. Your band back home sucks. That’s why no one’s heard of you, you’re playing power chords poorly, and you resort to just tapping the guitar and bobbing your head to cover the parts you don’t know.)

*Ploy (noun): A display of fake talent, intelligence or compassion performed in order to impress members of the opposite sex, and ultimately, to get laid. Men, particularly those on major sex droughts, are more likely to resort to ploys. Common backpacker ploys include: volunteering for NGOs; speaking a foreign language; being good with children and animals; caring about art, religion, world politics, the environment, feminism, gay rights, local inhabitants, and people with disabilities; disapproving of wild partying, drug use and promiscuity; and playing guitar.

The West coast is more chilled relaxed and apparently less backpackers….only time will tell

Out There and Back

When travelling you have much time to ponder and time is the theme of this first part as I have realised that no matter how bad or boring the places seem I know that once that moment is gone it is gone forever and looking back at that time I always wish I could be back there I guess you only remember the good parts of a trip and not the bad, it has been over 7 months since I have started travelling and the time for me has completely flown by but how is it for you have you all missed me or have I become just a distant memory of long ago much like swine flu?. In the 7 months I have travelled thousands of miles across earth have driven over 7500 km for a total of 68 hours added 145 more friends spent over £10,000 (car was £2000) been to 8 countries created one road kill and drank countless beers of all types and I never want this to end so I am seriously considering creating a registered charity to fund my trip!

I am putting a picture of me circa 2009 b.t (before travelling) and a recent picture of me to show that travelling has aged me and I think for the better, I am slowly making the transformation into traveller the long hair is coming along with it even getting in my eyes now although it does look like someone has frisbee’d road kill on my head only will I cut it when someone asks what kind of marsupial is on my head, the beard is getting bushier my wrist is full of beads and bracelets and im even contemplating getting rid of my trainers for walking boots, when I come back I may even just sell the big issue as I suspect I will look the part.

Now that is over I will tell you what I have been up to…..the good thing about having a car is that it gives me more freedom and a bigger space for stuff but it can also cause some problems as it poses the question when you get to somewhere ‘To tour or not to tour’ I could probably have done Uluru national park in my car and that would of made it cheaper and I would have had more control over my itiniery but then you don’t get to meet different people and have the knowledge of the tour guide explaining everything of how it was formed and what the art means so paid our $300 and joined the tour which was 2 nights camping and 3 days we were joined by mostly people from Switzerland and Germany with some South Korea and Slovenia thrown in for good measure overall the group was ok the Germans can be quite hit or miss and the Koreans normally keep to themselves and another problem when you have a group of people who can all speak the same language they will speak that even though you are the only person sitting at the table not understanding a single word. I am not sure whether I am blessed or unlucky as I forgot to tell you that the ‘Red Centre’ is not so red at the moment we may be one in ten thousand people who will get to see the centre as it is at the moment as we have arrived after the most amount of rain in 50 years so much so that they have enough water for the next 5 years so the area is lush with vegetation making it more the ‘Green Centre’ so I cant work out if I feel cheated out of seeing the redness of the outback or blessed for seeing something not a lot of other people have not seen.

The Kings Canyon was the first place we visited and it was a big canyon and we swam in a billabong yep that’s it it was pretty and a hard walk but that is all there is to say about that one, after that we headed to our camp collecting fire wood along the way and camped beside a raging fire as the nights in the centre are freezing with the days being scorching. When camping in the outback the first thing you notice at night is the sky full of stars like you have never seen before it is a wondrous moment to actually see the milky way not the chocolate bar but the galaxy. Due to the lack of artificial light shooting stars are also very easy to see just look at the same spot for 5 mins or so. Up at 0500 so we can see the sunrise at Uluru as you can imagine it was freezing and we were all really tired but the views were spectacular we could also see a lesser known rock which is actually bigger than Uluru Mount Connor resembles a red Table Mountain but as it is not as pretty as Uluru it does not get any of the adulation. Uluru was as you can imagine it was an awe inspiring symbol that cries out Australia watching it from sun set to sun down seeing all the colours changing every 5 minutes was as close to pure magnificence as you can get. The next day we had the chance to climb the rock if it was open and considering it is only open to climb around 30-50 days per year we were bang out of luck as the winds at the summit were too strong so our other plan was to walk 10km around the base whilst the sun was rising which to be fair was ok at best as at the base you can not distinguish that it is Uluru from the base but one good moment at the base was looking into the rock and it seems like it throbs moving back and forth not sure if this is due to the early start lack of breakfast sugar or all three! Valley of the wind was one of my favourite places it was a 3 hour walk through the valley with many red rocks either side and the end result was the ‘million dollar lookout’ which due to the rain season was amazing.







Our guide told us all the stories of the aboriginal people who settled by the rock and how there are mens areas and women’s areas and how a evil dingo spirit was summoned by the neighbouring tribe because they were put down by the other tribe and how when the dingo spirit entered the men’s areas 4 men dropped down dead, now I for one am more like Scully than Mulder and I need proof so I asked:
“Well we know its not an evil spirit so was it just another man from the other tribe or something that we can believe” No, according to the guide it was an evil dingo spirit still so I guess that is another X Files opened.






On the way home this should have been the most uneventful part but it was full of fun as we all heard one of the Swiss girls scream some incoherent words that no one even her husband could not recognise and after a few seconds she told us we lost a wheel on the trailer so pulling over we saw it was running on the rim and so we all got to work as we didn’t have the tools to fully repair it so we had to find a large log and put it under the wheel and drive the trailer forward to get it raised and then flag down some people who had the right sized equipment and jack to lift the trailer lucky for us in Australia people are ready and willing to help and in the end we had 4 people pulled over helping out or just talking to us, its funny when being in one of these situations I forgot to fill up my water bottle and subconsciously you start thinking who you would eat first if it came to it………….I decided the rude Germans kill two birds and all that. We got back ok just a bit late but still had time for our after party which would have been better had the music not been a local Baltic band which to me sounded like I was at a Jewish wedding. We drover out latter the next day as we went back to the Devil’s Marbles for the sunset which meant we had to stop off in Tenant Creek where again we were told not to walk around at night as we would probably be stabbed so it was a nice reminder of London and it was good advice as someone had to be air lifted out as they were stabbed in the throat.

When you have new people in the car you can re-use your old jokes as if they are new but before that can happen you have to gauge whether they can handle said jokes or revise them because of your audience and straight off the bat I had to cut out short jokes (Lotte), Ginger jokes (Nina), women jokes (all), Canadian jokes (Jess) and German jokes (Nina also) so there goes like half of my best stuff but sometimes there are just times when something is too good to let go……..like explaining to Nina that a Boomerang is just a Frisbee for ginger people BA DUM BOOM! To be fair she didn’t quite understand it and thus had to explain that they don’t have friends and have to play Frisbee on their own which took the sting out of the joke. A big difference travelling with girls is that when we arrive at a place instead of taking everything in one trip everything you will need I literally get hounded every hour as they want something else from the car they are also much more untidy than men even with Oli in the car.

So now up to Darwin am only 3 hours away as of writing this and need to get a job but so is every backpacker so I have a feeling it may be like a white man trying to get a farm job in Zimbabwe. Wish me luck.

Where the f*&k is Alice Springs

To make driving around Australia more economic I need to load the car out with people and then I need to sell it for as near as I have spent on it as possible, the cost of a bus ticket to do the route I have planned would be over $3000 so hopefully I will win! This brings me to the second leg of my journey from Cairns to Alice Springs then North to Darwin, I needed to get as many people in the car as possible well not like a world record attempt 18 people in a car but 3 other people so to split the cost of the fuel etc, I added a advert on line and after a few tweaks on the advert people were lining up to join my on my epic adventure and this posed a new experience…having to say yes to people and no to others it was pretty easy really the better looking you are the more likely you will get a place in the car, I did hope for another guy to balance it out but only one fit the bill and he couldn’t leave until later in April so it was sorted three women, Belgium, Canada and German this was going to be shit or bust as women are notorious for not getting along with each other but so far so good.

The first point on the map to get to was Normanton which was 8 hours away and still not out of the state of Queensland, we arrived there on a public holiday and again 95% of everything was closed EVEN THE PUBS im starting to think the Australians don’t want to work on these holidays, imagine England with people not working on public holidays the country would grind to a halt like when 2 inches of snow falls! Upon finding somewhere to stay it seems the closer you get to the centre the more brainless you get as simple questions like asking a caravan park if they have kitchen facilities so we can cook gained me a look like I had just spoken Cantonese with my pants round my ankles…..”There is a restaurant which is closed” was the answers so I gave up pretty quickly hoping she would have some knowledge of the surrounding area so it was pretty much go to bed!

The next day of driving was only 6 hours and when I say 6 hours I mean 6 hours of the most boring driving ever, the road is straight and there is nothing for miles but things do get interesting like when we see 2 cars in a row or when we have to over take a road train. A road train for those not in the know are 50-60 meter trucks that drive the length of the country transporting goods and they take over 1 km to stop! 6 hours to Mount Isa and this was a bigger town than Normanton mainly due to the immense mine there. Factoid for you the Mayor got in trouble for inviting ‘beauty disadvantaged’ women to come and live here to take advantage of the majority male population. We hit a problem here as did every other backpacker who was driving as the dorms were full with people trying to get there car fixed…..yes the car had a problem when driving it was wobbling my worst fears set in when I tried to jack the car up for the body to go up but the wheel didn’t PLEASE DON’T LET THE SUSPENSION BE BROKE was my prayer to Zeus’s beard but I jacked it on the leaf spring and found that the wheel was not round so time for my first tyre change now im waiting for Darwin so I can get a cheaper spare but all fine now!

Next day I had another good drive another 7 hours of nothing but least we crossed into a new state Northern Territories and this time Tennant Creek was the stop and we had been warned about this place that it was not safe to be walking around at night and maybe even in the day, I had also been warned to hide my jerry can of fuel and even put Diesel stickers on my fuel cap as the residents will try and steal my fuel. This brings me to another observation, the closer you get to the centre the less white people there are the more aboriginals there are and I would like to say that some of them shout and abuse you walking down the street and I have even been warned that if they walk in the middle of the road to head straight for them as if you stop they will rob you. I would like to say that some of them especially the larger women variety do look like Gorillas so much so if there was a mist I would have likened myself to Sigourney Weaver in ‘Gorillas in the Mist’. The white population in the centre also start to get different they get weirder like scary weird I can see why they don’t live on the coast as they probably would be in prison as most of them remind me of characters such as Fred West, Ian Huntley and Harold Shipman as they all have that look of a serial killer. Apologies to anyone offended if you live in the centre but these are only my observations of who I had met.

Next day 6 hours of driving but woo hoo there was something to see on the way, the Devils Marbles cue joke about the Devil being brain-dead anyway this was a section of outback with large boulders scattered in random formations as if they had been thrown down by the Gods themselves, I have actually seen something like this before in a place called Hampi in India, we spent a good hour taking pictures but had to leave when I saw a spider with an abdomen the size of an egg and fangs the size of tooth picks so I retreated to the relative safety of the car. We made it to Alice Springs the nearest town to Uluru (Ayres Rock) where we will set about on a 3 day tour sleeping under the stars in the outback and having a sing song around the campfire. As a side note I am undertaking a personal challenge of not having my haircut for 6 months so far been 3 months nearly got to tramp city but not yet but will do the beard whilst in South America so that I look poor!

1st night in Alice Springs we had someone try and break into the room whilst we were there so heres hoping the car will still be there once I come back.....

End of The East

Quite a bit to get through on this one as I have left it so long so long in fact that I have even left the East coast and embarked on the next leg of my Australian odyssey.

We completed the Fraiser Island trip alive and with a quite a few acquaintances that we would carry on meeting all the way to the final destination some of these were nice people some drained the life out of me but it was good to keep seeing them, we headed for Bundaberg which is famous for its rum and upon looking at the town I figured they must have all been drinking it whilst in pregnancy as every other person looked like they should be on that special blue bus to school. We did a tour of the rum factory it showed us how they made and stored the rum they also gave us free samples. We decided not to stay the night here as we wanted to get as close to Arlie beach as possible so we carried on driving and ended up in a place I think was Rockhampton but I cant quite remember the good thing about this place was the owners were friendly and the dorms were clean and comfy just what you need after a prolonged period of driving, this place was only a stop over so in the morning we grabbed our shit and headed for Arlie….Arlie beach is the launching point to get to the Whitsundays which are a group of islands in front of the great barrier reef which have been voted best beaches in the world and you may even remember Hamilton Island as this was the job Australia opened to the world to become the caretaker and earn a stupid amount of money to live and work on a beautiful island. We arried in Arlie Beach on Good Friday GREAT we thought we can have a good night and see one of our friends off, NO we cant Queensland rule is on Good Friday you can only be permitted into a pub/bar if you buy a meal and then you are only allowed in there for 2 hours, now can you imagine this rule anywhere in the UK? You thought the Poll Tax riots were bad this would be like the end of days Threshers and Oddbins would be trashed but like I say some parts of Oz are 15 years behind the UK like only buying alcohol in specific licensed places where in England you probably could pick up a six pack in a garden centre now.

The Whitsundays turned into the Wetsundays was the weather was awful for us and the group was not quite as good as the Fraiser group but there were some gems among the people, I had to brave the rain as for the first time in my life I was sea sick on this sailing boat so my choices were sit down in the cabin where I would all likely of thrown up or don the rain jacket and sit on deck……I chose the deck where instantly I was not a fan of sailing. Why spend so much money on a boat to work to get it where you want it to go? I’m more the type who would rather be on a yacht with a few Victoria’s secret models on board sipping Mai Tais. We saw the Whitsundays and Whithaven beach which was nice looking but as the weather was so awful I didn’t really care for it. Some of the crew were great on this boat but one of the skippers in training was a bit full on for some people and you have to remember this was a sail boat with all mixes of age and to be roll called in the morning to “GET UP YOU MOTHER FUCKERS” was not everyone’s idea of Earl Gray! It was quite funny reading some of the peoples feedback comments but we all knew they would sift through them and remove them but one of the people actually went down and complained to the office. We had an after party which I thought would not be as good as it turned out but the obnoxious crew member turned out and started asking why we had complained and actually tried to start a fight on the person who complained to his boss……..long story short he got arrested that night and then lost his job.

Sometimes the best parts of the trips are gambles our mission was Cairns but we had to stop off on the way as nothing is near each other in Australia why couldn’t they have built it all in one corner? We stopped off in Townsville which was a massive dump and the place we stayed in was basically for down and outs. The next morning was the choice to head further North to Cairns or go to Magnetic Island putting us off was the cost of 80 bucks each way to get the car over but we decided what the heck and headed off via ferry 8kms later we were on Magnetic Island and probably one of my favourite places on the East Coast it had a mix of Thailand and Middle India as the Island was quite tropical with lots of boulders scattered along its shores. Becoming one of the best places on the East Coast needs every element to work in its favour, we had the beautiful Weather we stayed in a great hostel and we had the great nights. Overall we won 150 bucks worth of free beer and I think in the end they were glad we left as we were so dominant kind of like Liverpool in the 80s and Manchester United in the 90s we took every competition seriously. First night was Ladyboys night where all the men who dressed up got free ‘Champagne’, I put Champagne in inverted comers as it was more like Goon wine with orange juice. We headed to the Op Shop (Charity shop) and bought our outfits with the intention to win and headed back and got some Norwegian girls to do our makeup……..well we were by far the prettiest of them all and Oli who was dressed like Big Bird from Sesame Street won first prize which gave us our first taste of victory. The next competition was Bar Wars where teams have to compete in a series of bar games to win the prize, we sent out secret weapon OLI into the battlefield. Let me tell you why he was our secret weapon he has duel nationality and is getting job seekers allowance from the Australian government despite never paying taxes over here so when something was free he was all over it like priests on school boys. Oli ran amok in the musical chairs even enjoying it this won us 50 bucks, the egg catching event we put a girl in and needless to say girls cant catch the next was clothes line which we did ok but the sex positions in one minute we sent Oli back into the battlefield and he won that giving us 1st and another 50 bucks.

Next stop Carins and to be fair there is not really that much going on up here its just drinking and diving. I did do a 11 dive live aboard on the great barrier reef which was so tiring but I got to dive with Bull Rays, White tip reef sharks, Giant sea turtles, Nurse Sharks to name but a few, the highlight was the night dive however as it was my first night dive I had to dive with the learning group who kept crashing into me and kicking me as they did not know what they were doing but other than that it was one of the best dives of my life as we were surrounded by sharks point the light away and they would come closer point it at them and they would go away if only Chief Brody had taken a torch when trying to get Jaws it would have been a lot easier. We had a good time in Cairns and this is the place I had to say goodbye to my friends as this is their last stop but its one of my first.

To conclude on the East Coast my favourite places were Sydney, Coffs and Magnetic Island but what I was disappointed with on the East Coast were the travellers if I can actually call them that many of the people are 18-20 and have chosen the East to travel as it is pretty piss easy as its all English so to me they are not real grubby open travellers, a lot of the people especially the girls have brought their arrogant ignorant views and social skills with them where as in Asia people were much more open to being approached and making friends. I have been told by people that the West coast is lot better in regards to travellers as they are the people who actually want to see stuff and not get drunk every day they are also a bit older in the 24-26 bracket.

Well that’s all for now I’m leaving Eastside and heading Westside via central and north and as a sneak peek for the next one I am travelling with 3 girls in the car now probably not much difference to the Eastside crew but it will either be really good or really bad. Made it half way to Alice Springs lets hope the next half is just as uneventful!

Till the next time.

Camp it up

Noosa Heads was the place I left you all at and at the time it was not a good place due to the hassle with trying to find somewhere to stay we did however have one big night out in the hostel and that redeemed Noosa in my opinion as it was an amazing night but we did have to say auf viedesan to Noosa and continue on our way.

We travelled backwards not normally the way to do it but it was to see Australia Zoo which was the zoo run and owned by the legendary Steve Irwin, you may remember him from such titles as Crocodile Hunter 1-8 and Top Deadliest Animals, the zoo was 55 bucks for entry and was worth every penny as we got to interact with the animals like feeding and petting the kangaroos who have the easiest life of any other kangaroo, they just lie there get petted and get fed, another interaction was touching a koala it was a bit like a velvet fur and he didn’t seem to mind being touched.

Next stop was a trip to Rainbow bay where we hung out on the beach for a few hours, the problem with Australia is that everything is so god damn far 3 hours is close 8 hours is the normal drive to the next decent place so unless we are going to bed down in a place we generally have to keep moving so from Rainbow bay we continued to Hervey Bay which was where we were going to bed down and book a tour of Fraiser Island………….

Fraiser Island was created by 800,000 years of drifting sands and is like no where else on Earth, it is also known as K’Gari or Paradise by the local Abbo’s. The island is rich with crystal clear lakes and rivers and is quite hard to imagine that it is atop of a pile of 120km of sand. The island does pose some hazards as people die and get injured there quite often, the swell around the island is brimming with Tiger Sharks and the rip tides are outright incredible so any entry into the water was at the persons own risk so I opted for ankle depth. The oceans are also full with jelly fish and you didn’t even have to get into the water for them to sting you as the stingers were all over the beach……so if Dr Pepper did trips to Fraiser Island ‘whats the worst that could happen?’ You go swimming a rip (under current) takes you out to sea you get stung by a jelly then you get eaten by a shark. Not all dangers were in the sea the island is populated by Dingos which are wild dogs which are sort of native to Australia but were in fact brought over hundreds and thousands of years ago I think from PNG but check Wiki as I could be wrong. The ultimate danger though is the human in the 4x4, due to the island being made of sand you need to hire a off road vehicle to navigate the island and many deaths occur from foolish driving which result in the jeeps being rolled but as you can tell from this blog I survived and I have a tale to tell.

The worst thing about booking these sort of trips is the group, a bad group can make even the most charming of places seem like hell, imagine paying to stay at the most expensive hotel in the world then realising someone annoying is there like Jordan or Kerry Katona it would ruin it but on the other hand a great group can make a crap place amazing. The groups were of 8 or 9 in one vehicle and in my opinion our group was made up of the best.

1. Me
2. John (Travel Buddy)
3. Tim (Also Travel Buddy)
4. Miriam (Attractive Swed)
5. Jo (As above)
6. David (Guitar man)
7. Victoria (Attractive Dane)
8. Sandra (As above)

From our group there were 3 other groups who also were of quality stock although they didn’t quite have the get up and go as our group. Room in the 4x4 was limited this was probably due to the 5 boxes of goon, bottle of Smirnoff , 15 cans of alchopop and the 90 beers that we needed to fit in. Once all our safety stuff was done we then had to go shopping for food which we let the girls do and this probably attributed in the weight loss I have suffered as a consequence, im sure all the celebs will be on the ‘Fraiser Island Weight Loss Diet (FIWLD)’ very soon basically its one full meal a day with the rest of the day being carrots or apples with lots of walking involved.

The company gave us a guide and the first day we went to Lake Wabby look out then down to the lake where we doned our boxers and took a dip in the refreshing lake, next was to the campsite where we had to all set up, when I say campsite I mean behind the dunes with no facilities so number 2’s were shovel in hand and find a spot to dig **please note the FIWLD is not good for stemming the flow of digestion**.

Night time approached and so did the Dingos but in all honesty after the talk from the company they made them out to be like Hound of the Baskervilles who would literally eat your face off given the chance in reality they are just scrounging dogs. The night also kicked off some drinking games and some sing songs………….

Next morning we headed off to Indian Head which we climbed and tried to see sharks or mantas but all I saw was a turtle. One of the girls decided to have a paddle in one of the pools there but a wave swept her around the perceived safeguard of the rocks and bang she was in a rip, lucky she recovered only slightly shaken. Next was to Champagne pools which are pools but as the waves come over they create a fizzing effect hence the name, I loved this part as the water was so salty it made me very buoyant and floating was effortless. This day we visited a ship wreck on the beach and also a creek but these were pretty boring in my view.

Night two and it was pretty much the same as number one but more drunk but an event did happen during the early hours of the morning while all were slumber, Tim was savagely attacked by a Dingo in the tent so how did he handle it? Like the safety video showed us (stay calm) NO he let out a ‘death cry’ from the pit of his stomach something akin to the end of the NZ hakka and lashed out with his feet at the foul beast (please note the prevailing screams were heard by David who was in the truck and all the other tents surrounding ours who made the split decision to do fuck all), it was a fight for life with the adrenaline soaring ‘fight or flight’ kicked in Tim still roaring from the belly crying out “DINGO” carried on kicking until he heard the Dingo speak “You pair of fucking idiots” it shouted at Tim, turned out it was the wet end of Johns sleeping bag that had touched Tims feet and in sheer terror he believed the Dingo’s wet nose was nuzzling at his toes looking for a tasty treat. Johns response to being kicked repeatedly in the chest was to accuse Tim and I of conducting a prank to scare the shit out of him which to be fair is quite likely, where was Chris I hear you ask when all this commotion broke out in camp, well I was 12 inches away sound asleep completely oblivious to the nights event.

Next stop Arlie Beach for the Whitsundays 3 day boat trip to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, just hoping for an amazing group as before.