Spent the morning on the campsite talking to the guy parked next to us in a battered old green camper van. He was an Aussie pensioner who was a bit of an old hippy - smoking weed all the time. He's in the area as its Nimbin's 'Mardis Grass' festival next weekend, he's from Adelaide. We helped him put some tint on his back window - which wasa very long drawn out process, especially as he kept breaking every so often to have a toke on his 'cone' !! he wasa nice guy and told us lots about Ausralia - Aussies all seem to be so knowledgeable and proud about their country. We then drove to Coolangatta which looked a bit like a run down, tacky retirement village so we carried on through to Surfers Paradise. The sky had opened up by this time and it was chucking it down so we parked before deciding to drive round and find somewhere we may be able to park for the night. Sufers is just a strip basically, sandwiched between lots of other places that on the map look separte but they all run together. Its full of horrid high rise hotels and I don't know how they have the gall to call it anyones kind of paradise! Its so chepa and tacky its opressive. As we were driving we heard a loud beeping at the side of us and it was the irish guys we'd met in Byron Bay so we followed and found somewhere to park by a backpackers place they said was ok. We left the van there and went to investigate the shops in the drizzly greyness. The shops were what you'd expect in a touristy place - but very expensive. Went for a beer in an Irish bar and after a couple we joined 3 people on the next table. A couple, Marianne from Birmingham and Neil from Dublin, and Jeremy, who was from Surfers - he hated it too! Marianne is working here teaching English. We ended up going back to their apartment which was near where we'd parked and stayed at theirs on the sofa bed. Their place was quite cool, with double sliding doors onto a seating area on the roof which led onto a communal area with bbq and swimming pool. Had a really good night.