I was a little on the blue side after saying adios to mr james, so after a good few hours of moping about in Gloria Jeans drinking my weight in caramel cappucinos i headed back to the ranch. I was staying in Bunk which turned out to be a pretty good hostel, so good in fact that i extended my stay about 5 times before finally accepting it was time to move on. I bonded with my roomies nicely though and on my first night without james we all went out for some thai which was lovely until one of the guys (whose name im embarrased to say escapes me) suddenly started declaring his love of weapons of mass destruction and our fun travel chat rapidly deteriourated into listening to him discuss the technicalities of hand grenades. After that i made the insanely mature option of telling everyone i was off to the toilet then legging it home. Luckily the next morning i had to move rooms which surprisingly i had no problem with whatsoever. Spent a couple days exploring Brisbane and didnt even get lost which is always a bonus. The next morning I was offered a free ride to Surfers Paradise by one of my new German roomates which i decided to decline for the sole reason that the guy was totally butt naked and had absolutely no qualms about being so - seriously just too early in the morning for that kind of exposure.

My trip down to surfers was pretty straightforward apart from when i randomly got off the train about 20 stops too early and luckily managed to jump back on miliseconds before getting rammed in between the sliding doors.

In all honestly im not the biggest fan of surfers paradise, i mean im very glad i went to check the place out but i just seems a little on the fake side. It may be that im just a little 'beached out' (bloody hope not as im on my way to byron bay, bondi beach then st kilda) but it just seemed like the whole place was created soley for the boozy backpackers to get tanned and tanked along the strip. Despite all this im still glad i went there to see what all the fuss was about, and hell i got caught in the mother of all thunderstorms while walking to the bus stop and got told i looked like a camel by a homeless dude because i had Russel the Rucksack strapped to my back dripping with rain so you know, it's all about the experience!

Next stop was byron bay which was utterly, absolutely, totally amazing. Ended up randomly bumping into our fraser island friends (katie and stef) so we all booked a trip to Hippie Heaven - nimbin.

Altogether i fell in love with the relaxed, chilled out nature of byron - had Tallow Bay all to myself at 5am to watch the sunrise which was absolutely beautiful and totally worth being shattered for the rest of the day for. And before i knew it it was time to head back to syndey for christmas. Time had flown by and even though i had been compared to a camel and had a conversation with a naked stranger, i loved every minute!

Jo