It's definitely beginning to feel weird - I have 8 days untill I leave for home. As much as im looking forward to seeing everyone again that ive missed for ages.... I want to stay out here for soooooooooo much longer. There are places that ive breezed past where I could have easily stayed and worked for months - once again the way of life here is so bloody fantastic. Bumping into people who have been travelling australia for over a year just makes me want to come back to do the exact same thing. And I will. No doubt.

So I hopped on the new Oz Experience bus at 6:30am after the OzParty night to join a completely new group of travellers. The driver and I were the only ones on the bus for the first 10 mins as we scooted round the one way systems of Sydney to pick up the others. Good guy - if a bit odd :P We all made friends pretty quickly on the bus - partly due to getting lost in a huge service station looking for the cafe we could get 10% off PIE! Anyway - our first destination was the 'Spot-X Surf Camp' which included a free 2 hour surf lesson! Had a goos time in the water pretty much just admiring the awesome sunrise view as the waves didn't often reach above 2 feet. After that... SpotX was pretty much the best chill out place I've ever been to. 5 hammocks arranged in a circle in an awesome sunny position - with an ipod dock in the corner to blast out your own tunes. A campfire site in the middle of the place for the evening coldness... And awesome group of workers and surfers who got the drinking games going at night - plus buffet food... This was one of the places I could have stayed for weeks (DOING PHOTOGRAPHY FOR FREE ACCOM AND FOOD) but only had 1 night :(

From there we moved on to the famous Byron Bay. Now this really sucked :'( because of how much of a rush I was in... I had 1 night here... and varely even saw the actual beach. And didnt even get to check out the hottest club/bar in town because I arrived on sunday and they weren't open. Not cool. However - I moved swiftly on the next day - leaving a few peeps behind - to the Gold Coast, to meet up with a friend of a friend of Ben (in vietnam) who is now a good friend! I wound up in Miami, yes, Miami at round 9am and strolled down the the beach - which was damn nice for somewhere that is hardluy marked on the east coaster trail. Anyway - The time spent with Natalie and Lucas in Miami was a great chill out few days. It felt kinda nice to slip into someone elses regime for a bit. It was good fun discovering what a 'bogun' was - and what it takes to knock them into action :P And I had my eye violated by a pretty full on twisted film called Splice and the cinema! I had a brief experience of Surfers Parasites (Surfers Paradise) which was wicked - a lush beer and the purchase of the best towel EVER :D That and some free hot dogs from a place called Nobby's pretty much sums it all up! Had a great time with great hospitality :) Thank you!

Once again it was a quick move on to the next destination - Rainbow Beach. For this was the gateway to the awesome Fraser island! My word was this a blast! :D There's way too much stuff to try and include.. but I want to try becase I dont want to forget any of it! Basically - it's a 3 day, 2 night self drive 4x4 trip - lead by a guide in his own 4x4 on yet another picture perfect island. No... You can't get enough of them. So I was grouped with 17 others split across 3 4x4s. By the endof the trip, we had all made really god friends with one another and had shiiiiiiiit loads of banter and stories and inside jokes. The trip was pretty much one big piss-up intertwined with incredible stop offs... A huges rusty ship wreck burried in the sand. Indian Head lookout whwere we saw: 5 Manta Rays, a turtle, 4 sharks, roughly 15 dolphins and whales serging from the water on the horizon. I could have stayed there for hours. There wasn;t a cloud in the sky and the sea crystal blue. However - the one downside was - while we were driving along the road (beautiful beach) with the lush on 1 side - we werent actually advised to go in - SHARK INFESTED WATERS! Big no no apparently. Which thought was pretty damn cool. haha! But what we did have were the inland lakes. Naturally sand filtered fresh water, surrounded by forest fringed shifting sand dunes. Sublime. :D But it was at night that all the antics began. Now... I don;t know what 'Goon' means to you... but out here it = the cheapest way to get wasted or "GOONED" - literally, the s***tiest 12% wine in a shiny metallic bag with a valve. :D AARRRRGGHH GOOOON :P Personally.. I cant bare the stuff... so went for a slab of 30 beers. It's named goon because the aboriginals used to use the finished goon bags for pillows by blowing air into them - and the aboriginal word for 'pillow' is... you guessed it. That's what I was told anyway. Our first night was camping on the very beach itself. It was shame that we weren;t allowed to light camp fires, but insteqad we had a lantern.... didnt realy give that much heat... so we ended up using a shed load of gas from our cooker and throwing grass on it... :P but the drinking games did commence none the less - be us wrapped up in sleeping bags or not. We were looking directly east out over the ocean... so after the sun had set, at around 8pm the moon erupted, dark red and ornage, from the sea. We all sat up on the ridge of the sandblow (dune) to watch it rise as it slowly turned from red to white to light up the campsite. A couple of us including me stroleld down to the water edge to sit and watch it climb more... while we sat we could actually see the moons gravitational pull acting on the tides! As the moon rose the waves began intruding upon our postions. It was sweeeeet.

Our second night was much the same - burgers for dinner, a beer and goon for desert. Perfect! Although it was a catastrohpy when a bloody Kookaburra swooped in... amoungst about 8 of us.. and stole the best bit of bacon right out of the frying pan!! Anyway... the nest morning we were also woken by the birds. It was like a switch being flicked on - suddenly at around 5:30 they started shrieking crazyness all around the forest. And then there was the 'LASER BIRD' so named by me because of the noise it made: 'deoooooooooooooooooooo - TEW!!' like a laser noise. Apparently called a Whip bird or something. Meh... :P Oh an it also took us aaaaaaaages to remember what the name of the dude turtle was called in Finding Nemo (all started because of theb turtle we saw from Indian Head). Eventually we found out and in the process developed the 'Flip..... Noggin.... 'Duuuuuude'' handshake. Good Times.

So yeah - we came back... had 1 day to relax and do nothing.. but of course we played drinking games in the evening. I painted a boomerang... played 'Goon Ball' and managed to avoid getting dressed in a mankini. But today was the break up of the awesome Fraser Island group All went south except me... I headed North and am now in The town of 1770. Were Captain Cook first settled. Off to a cattle station tomorro... and Airlie Beach after that for the WHITSUNDAY ISLANDS SAILING!!!

8 days..... s***!