Blog Day 136 Mon 19th September 2011

So up bright & early today with ease, purely because we are excited to be picking up our new home come set of wheels for the next 77 days. We take the shuttle bus into town & walk a further 15 minutes out of town to the Spaceship offices. We arrive at the office, fill in a few forms & get told we can pick 4 films from the table in the corner. The guy apologises for the lack of films & how poor the general selection of films was. So we head over & Dan being a film buff picks up U-571 this though happens to be the only one that he recognises. So it's a random selection of a Harrison ford film called Regarding Henry & then 2 random films that we will probably never even watch. After this we get handed our keys & are shown to our Spaceship, Medusa. A quick check of where things go & what things are for & a signature to agree that all is in working order & we hit the road, back to the hostel to have a more in depth chat with Renee. After this we drive back into town to take Sharne for lunch as a thank you for all she has done for us so far. This takes a turn around when she invites us over for a roast dinner in the evening, we jump at this as we haven't had a proper roast dinner since staying with Rob & Val in South Africa, so a good 3 months ago, our mouths water at just the thought of it. Dan being Dan however insists on just one thing….that he makes the gravy, Sharne says that she doesn't do gravy so it works out perfectly. We arrange to pick her up when she finishes work & head of to do a spot of shopping before heading back to the hostel to take a proper look at Medusa. 5pm soon rolls around & before we know it the smell of a pork roast dinner is filling the room of Sharne's apartment which by the way is amazing. We meet her housemate Jess & a couple of friends (instant forgettable people that we shall name A and B) that are also over from England travelling Australia. The guys all get on the Goon which is a really cheap version of wine, a true backpackers drink but it is utterly disgusting & Trish politely skips & joins Dan on the non-drinking because 'WE'RE' driving excuse. The roast dinner however turns out to be just delicious & the gravy almost brings a homesick tear to our eye. It also wins a ton of compliments. The Goon actually lives up to its name when Goon A nearly orgasms over the food that has been served up, she reckons she hasn't eaten food this good in a while but the way she is raving about it sounds as though she's never had a roast dinner in her life. And Goon B just seems to be in the shadow of her & mumbles that it was better than noodles. Goon is really a Goon kind of drink! But who knows when times get rough we may have to resort to it too, though we think we'd rather just be non-drinkers!

Blog Day 137 Tues 20th September 2011

Today see's us waking up & heading back to the Spaceship office as yesterday we discovered that the DVD player was hanging by a wire therefore refusing to work. After inspecting the busted TV monitor and deciding that it's totally knackered the guy at the office gives us 2 options (in the most winey and annoying voice known to man!). He says we can either carry on with the busted monitor that doesn't work, rendering the DVD selling point of these particular vans absolutely useless. Or we can swap it for a van that has a working monitor………………………..gee let us think……..um new van please Bruce! WHAT A DUMBASS!

So we say goodbye to Medusa & say hello to Jaz. We also take this opportunity to pinch the two pillows from Medusa giving us a grand total of 4 pillows, which are so thin that they barely make up one decent pillow! Still…..'He who dares Rodney!'

All this early morning excitement has left us feeling a little peckish, so back in town we stop at a café called the Gingerbread café, they do great coffee & eggs benedict. We sit for a while trying to put a plan together for Renee. She is really keen to get some business from Dan's Dad's company, she has insisted that we stay in all the Nomads Hostels down the east coast. This knowledge would have been fantastic if we had it before deciding to fork out money on a campervan! Still it will be a nice to break up the nights in the van with nights in Hostels. She is also putting us on a 3day/2night Fraser Island trip which is saving us a ton of money!

After an hour or so we feel the need to either buy more drinks or leave so we do the latter & go off to do our first big food shop to load the camper up. Probably about 2 hours later we are back at the hostel packing our things neatly into Jaz's nooks and crannies. Once this is all done we make the mammoth discovery that today is cheap Tuesday and Domino's Pizza is the place to be! We jump into Jaz and follow our noses around most of Cairns on a safari style drive. Fortunately the big Dominos sign is a lot easier to spot than the lions and leopards in South Africa, and within 30 we are making our way back to the hostel with 2 large pizzas and a warm baguette of garlic bread.

Lovely Jubbly!