In just a few minutes we will be leaving behind the sun, sea and sand of Surfer’s Paradise and heading back out to Texas to work on the farm again – about as far removed from this social hub of the Gold Coast as you could possibly imagine!!

After gaining an hour from crossing back into Queensland, we arrived in Surfer’s fairly early on Thursday morning and made our way to Elaine’s place to prepare for the day ahead and after the meeting and greeting of her friends it was straight onto the beach. We were the envy of the group thanks to our camping chairs (complete with bottle holders in the arms) and we began the day in earnest as we all worked our way through several esky’s full of ice-cold beer. However, it wasn’t all just messing around in the sun and we still managed to fit in some exercise in the forms of beach cricket and splashing around in the water, and we even had time to learn a foreign language as we accosted a group of Japanese girls.

As the day wore on and the sun got stronger, inexplicably we found that the sea was becoming more and more alluring and we made sure that the lifeguards earned their money that day as we splashed drunkenly amongst the waves. Once the sun had faded away, we made our way back inside to get changed before heading out to one of the local pubs – one that actually sold pints rather than just the stupid small schooners or pots that people seem happy enough to drink out here!

As evening became night, and night in turn became morning, things continued to make less and less sense, culminating in Jen going up to the DJ to ask for a song only to be told that they couldn’t do requests as it was karaoke and none of us had even noticed!! We took this as out cue to leave and headed out to La’Porcheta with Elaine and Andrew as we were promised the best pizzas in town, before heading to Andrew’s place where we had been provided with bed and shelter. Unfortunately, we will never know how nice the pizzas are as Jen managed to fall out of the jeep (well, she’s not used to being up so high!) and decorate the driveway with cheese, tomato and other goodies!! Normally this would have provided much amusement, but such was our hunger that the one remaining slice was soon devoured amidst a rage by yours truly in such a way that even now I have no idea how it tasted!!

We awoke yesterday morning feeling just a little bit tired and had a productive day of doing absolutely nothing except lying by the pool back at Elaine’s, but even that proved to be a struggle as we were too cold in the shade and too hot in the sun! After some debate we concluded that the only safe thing to do was to grab a subway and then head back to bed for the rest of the afternoon and wait for Elaine to finish work. Our last evening in civilization was spent as it should have been – in front of the TV with friends, with Pizza Hut and gallons of Coke!!

Now though, it’s back to the campsite in Texas for us, where we will be spending the next few months while we go back to work on the farm for Ray and Kathy. All this just so that we can apply for a second working holiday visa! Best be worth it!!