We left Sydney on Saturday 13th February 2010, a 7 hour bus journey on the greyhound awaited us! We were told by the due at STA travel to arrive at the Greyhound offices at Central station an hour before the bus departure and that the offices were 24 hour and the buses were never full! Good job then we arrived at 5.45pm to book our tickets as the offices shut for the day at 6pm and there were only 5 seats left on the bus!

Port Macquarie was our first stop and we were due to arrive at 1.45am Sunday morning, we ended up riding co pilot right at the front of the bus with " Wes" our friendly driver! Who couldn't have given less of a s***, he enjoyed more so that driving a bus, answering his mobile, cleaning DVD's (which didn't work) with a dirty towel, eating bananas and speaking so quietly over the tannoy dolphins and dogs wouldn't have heard a single whisper of his wisdom! He was from the " if you can't find it grind it, i'll drive really slowly on the straights, really fast round the bends and spend most of the time driving with my elbows" school of driving! But anyways we arrived safe and sound, we found our accommodation in the dark , a nice 4 bed private room just for us and Sam and hit the hay!

We stayed what was basically a caravan park with a few backpacker blocks built in it, the accommodation was really good, they did a free BBQ for backpackers on the Sunday and the site had a big swimming pool and direct access to the beach. Port Macquarie itself is a lovely little unspoilt town missed by the vast majority of travellers who will bypass it zooming up the East Coast to more supposedly " cool" places such as Byron Bay, but it is defintely worth a visit!

The beach front walkway is lined with rocks all decorated by past visitors to the town, and the beaches themselves are really good. We visited the Koala Hospital which is the only one of its kind in the world. There is a free guided tour and it is really interesting to hear all about the Koalas being treated on their road to recovery before their release back into the wild if possible. Some were injured in bush fires, some savaged by dogs, some hit by cars but the vast majority suffer from the inventively named " wet bottom!" They are cute little things but I reckon they could take off your face with a single swipe of their little paws with big claws!

On the Monday we had to check out of our room at 10am yet our onward bus to Byron Bay was not until 1.45am Tuesday morning. Leaving us with nearly 16 hours until the bus departing! We would have gone to the beach yet just for change it rained! That is three weeks in Oz so far and three weeks where at some point it has rained every single day, I'm sure this doesn't happen even in the UK! Sods law they have had the wettest February ever while we are here! Back on topic, our killing time involved playing draughts and Connect 4 (cheers Lucy!) eating ice cream and moving bench to bench with all our belongings like restless hobos! We did meet a interesting chap though who was originally from Grimsby, but have lived in Oz for 35 years, he was desperate to move back to the UK but his wife would not let him! We think he was about 80 ish but he didn't look that old we guessed this because he mentioned he played his part in the great last war and will apparantly be back in England like a shot when the next war breaks out, according to him it will be very soon! It will be a civil war between the white english and everyone else, you see he was an uber racist, and wasn't backward in coming forward about telling us his views who he didn't know from Adam. He was a member of the BNP, and would like them all out! he even came out with the classic one liner to Franki " You will probably end up marrying a Paki you will!" nice chap!! As time withered away we went to the cinema to watch the last showing film of the day which happened to be " Up in the Air" with George Clooney. ok but not convinced how it ended up with 6 Oscar Nominations! We also saw on route to the cinema, four elderly Belgian chaps with T s***s " 4 Belgian Beauties!" written on the back, don't think so! Also saw around a million bats flying around at Dusk in a huge group stretching across the Horizon as far as you can see for around ten minutes truly a sight to behold we just needed a David Attenbrough commentary!

The bus eventually came and we were on our way to Byron Bay (which I will leave with Franki to tell you on our next Internet opportunity) for what it's worth I wasn't a big fan except for the walk to the Lighthouse and Cape Byron!

Cheerio, Bye, Ta Ta