So yea I was sat on the internet at around 11am and I hear 1 of my roommates go and pay her rent for the week. She is talking to the receptionist and normally I wouldn't have taken any notice except she sounded quite excited and I heard the receptionist say it's something she thinks won't last very long.

Wondering what it is I abandon the internet and have a look at the leaflet thats been posted on the job wall. It's basically a sheet of paper announcing that a Charity Event which happens every year is short of road crew. Our job is to drive a car for the week, keep beer cool in the esky and hand it out, in exchange for free food, free accomodation, jet ski trips and "the best week we'll have in Australia". It said you needed to have a drivers licence though. I ran to find Victoria and dragged her to the notice, she looked at it and said that I should ring up and go but she couldn't drive.

I rang up and asked for a guy called Matt, I told him I was interested and that I knew someone else who would like to come but she couldn't drive, he basically said it didn't matter and "the more the merrier" and that it was "nothing dodgy". We said the event didn't actually start until Sunday but they were passing through Bowen and could take us up to Townsville that afternoon or we could make our own way on Sunday. Not much to think about really, we headed up that day with 2 of the girls we were sharing a room with. It's quite funny looking back because not 5 minutes after we set of 1 of the trailers broke and we drove down a dirt track to a farm. Afterwards the guys said you must have been thinking what the hell is going on but we were too much like "awwww look at the dogs". Anyway we set off, with me driving a massive 4x4 Ute with a double trailer and 2 Jet Ski's on the back.

We arrived in Townsville and found out we were staying at a 4 star hotel, we were just like :O unreal. That night we hung around the hotel bar and had a proper laugh with around 15-20 of the people who had arrived early and got noise complaints from laughing too much. The next day we had a mooch around Townsville to find fancy dress for the few theme nights we had, there was Cowboys, 70's, Black Friday, and PJ party. We got some good stuff.

We went to a guy called Ryans house that night and had an awesome time. He had an amazing house, with an outside Jacuzzi with TV's surrounding it and a fridge and a crazy labrador. There were a few more people than the previous night, and we had another wicked night which we kept commenting on and everyone just kept saying "the week is only going to get better" which we didn't quite believe at the time.

The next day we got woken up at around 7:30 and asked if we wanted to go Jet Skiing, and we thought, why would we not want to go :D So we jump on these massive jetski's, see when I thought of Jetski's I always pictured those 1s that you can hire when you're on holiday. WRONG. These things can seat 3 people, are around 3 metres long and 1 across and can go up to 90mph. Off we go and we find out we're going to Magnetic Island, which we'd wanted to go to all along, and we're going for free. It took about 90 minutes there and 90 minutes back, and maybe 30 minutes to drive around the island. We jumped off at a pub at 9:45 and had some breakfast. Words can't describe how much fun it was, though I was paying for it for about another 4 days because my muscles were killing me, stairs were a major problem.

We had a shower, got some dry clothes on and went to find out where the next party was taking place, obviously we found the usual suspects at the bar. They seem to take it personally if you don't constantely have a beer in your hand so ofcourse we allways had a beer in our hands. The people on this trip are obviously mulitmillionairs. We found out later in the week that the jetski's cost anything between around 15,000 and 28,000 pounds, the trip cost them all around 5000 pounds, and most of them have businesses turning over 15+ million pounds a year. Yet every single person on the trip were the most grounded, funniest, kindest, generous people I've ever met. 1 of the major characters is a guy called Brownie, who has told us when we finally go back to Sydney before we fly home he'll take us for flights in his helicopter :o

We woke up the next morning to start JetTrek officially and set off from Townsville, after dumping the JetSkis into the water (reversing a trailer is much more difficult than it looks) and arriving in Ayr. We got to the "Motel" which was more like a 3 star hotel and had a proper laugh in the car park as 1 of the guys brought out a home made tennis ball launcher and was shooting them for absolutely miles. We then got changed into our PJ's and headed across the road to the other hotel the others were staying in for Dominoes and another party. I forgot to mention as well that everynight everyone on the Trek gets together to have dinner, chat and to be "briefed" for the following days events. This usually ends in people getting fined for doing stupid things, like their jetski breaking down and everyone laughing at each other. We had an earlyish night ready for the next day which was back in Bowen! We also found out the night out was at our hostel we were staying at there :D

We did the usual dropping off of Jetski's and driving and arrived in Bowen. We drove to the top of this massive hill (thank god for 4x4s) and had 360 views of Bowen and the surrounds. We watched the ski's drive past us and then we drove to the boat ramp to pick them up. We arrived at the Caravan Park, got settled into our Cabin and got changed because tonight was Cowboy night!

We got picked up and dropped off at Aussie Nomads and surprised all our friends who were so excited to see us. We then had an awesome BBQ of sausages, amazing steak, potato salad etc and had a night of people riding a mechanical bull. We all had a go and peer pressured a few of the backpackers to get up there, it was a brilliant night. The last bus back was at 11pm so we jumped on it, went back to our room, and found out Matt who has been missing all night had passed out in my bed, luckily there were loads of spare rooms available and we slept somewhere else. A quick note about Matt, it's pretty impressive what he manages to do really, he wakes up at 6, has a Pepsi Max to "rehydrate" and then startes on the beer. He even uses the glove compartments in his jetski to make sure there's always cold beer around. Its quite a site to see a guy stood up on a Jetski doing 70mph with a beer in his hand thats for sure.

The next day was Airlie Beach, so we did our jobs and arrived at our 5 star hotel. This trip was still very surreal. We got taken out on a private boat, to a private beach where we had seafood and beers on a bar 1 of the guys living there had built for us. The highlight was when a massive army helicopter arrived and did a flyover because 1 of the Jetskis had broken and had to be flown out. Ofcourse Matt was once again involved as it was his JetSki and he rand after the helicopter whilst wearing a panda costume, it was like something out of a dream. We planned on having a quiet night again in preparation for the following day, however our room got broken into and Victoria got dragged on a night out. By the sounds of it it was a brilliant night, Matt got his gold sequined shirt out and was harrassing locals and backpackers alike, introducing himself as "The Creepy Old Guy In The Corner", a title we had given him.

We woke up the next day very excited because this was the day we had been looking forward to the most. We were getting taken out to the Whitsundays on jetskis! I shotgunned a guy called PoGo who is undoubtably 1 of the best Jetskiers in Oz, if not the world. He convinced me to stand up and so we did, for the majority of the 150 miles round trip, at a lot of points reaching top speads. We had dugongs (which are like manatees) swim right below us, so many fish, and even turtles around. We passed a backpacker boat and went and had a chat to the people on it, Matt was busy filling people in, which is where you go at top speed and turn quickly to throw water at like 90mph at them, a sport he much enjoys, especially when you get thrown off. He even did it to a few boats full of tourists and fishermen!

We arrived at Whitehaven Beach (the above picture) and had another awesome BBQ on the beach. Unfortunately we enjoyed it too much by that point and stayed too long, the tide had gone out around 2 meters so we had to tow the jetskis back out to water which took quite a long time. We jumped on the back of the Ski's and drove to Hamilton Island to get refulled whilst being filmed for the DVD they do every year (which we can get a copy of!). We fulled at Hamilton Island and got back to Airlie by 5pm. It was 70's night so we got dressed up again, had dinner and went out round Airlie. 1 of the best nights out I've ever had, it was mostly the younger part of the people on the Trek and we didn't get to bed until 4:30 but it was so worth it.

We woke up at 6:45, and I don't know whether it was the dancing or the cold bath I had but I was hardly even aching from the 8 hours or so we spent on the Ski's, but I was rather tired from the just over 2 hours of sleep the night before. Luckily we had another 6 hours to kill in Airlie so we got some food and a nap and felt much better. We drove to Laguna Keys, had to dress in black and had dinner. We went back for an early night and fell asleep on the sofa bed in the living room. At 12 or so we got woken up and said we could go into 1 of the rooms to sleep as there were people coming back for an after party. We woke up the next day and the room was trashed, it was like something out of a TV show, it was crazy.

We drove to Mackay for our final day, picked up the Jetski's and had 1 final night. We've definitely made friends for life on this trip, from the group of people our age who were so welcoming of us into their group, to the older lot who wanted nothing but a laugh. They work very hard and they play even harder, when they get the chance.

Needless to say, from when I 1st saw the advert with it saying it would be the best week of our stay in Oz, and not really believing it, I've been converted. It was easily the best week in Oz, if not the best in my life. It wasn't just the fact we had a 3500 pound holiday for free, it was the fact only 4 backpackers have ever done that trip and how lucky we are. But the main reason was the people, there was no one there who didn't make us feel welcome and like we shouldn't be there. We got the mick taken out of us a lot, but were told to give it back just as much which we did. It's funny because we would have been those backpackers on the boat we saw, and now I only feel sorry for them because no one in Australia can say they have done what we have done, or had as fun a time doing it.

Oh and I'll upload all the pictures when I get the chance :D