After a few hours, we arrived in suburbian Surfers Paradise - the city on the sea. We jumped off the greyhound and walked a couple of hundred metres round the corner to our new hostel/hotel. As we did so, we were greeted with overwhelming screams and shouts. These were not for us, however. They were the local 'Schoolies' (aka 16/17year old kids who had just broken up from school) running around terrorising the locals and generally having a good time. We all chuckled to ourselves and checked into our hostel, unaware of the fact that the hostel was attached to a massive hotel which was currently booked out with the dreaded Schoolies!!!

Initially, we only booked in for a couple of nights but as soon as we entered our room, we decided to extend. The room was a luxury for us, tv, shower to ourselves, room to ourselves, balcony overlooking the swimming pool and spas. We were ecstatic which made us go a bit crazy and we booked oursleves in for 2 weeks. We knew the welshies would be joining us on the Monday so we decided for the weekend we would have a quiet one and just relax around the hostel and pool. Which is exactly what we did, until the Welshies arrived on the Monday...

From this point on, it began to get messy. We had a joyous reunion with our new family having left them for a few days and decided a celebration was in order. This, of course, involved the steady flow of goon in our room before we embarked on exploring the local nightlife. The evening ended up in a small bar called the Avenue which we all became very fond of as time went on.

The next couple of days were spent in a very similar manner, however the weather was not overly sunny so much of the time was spent eating, watching tv and in the room. We did venture out to purchase our tickets to the many theme parks in Surfers, including Seaworld, Movie World, Wet n Wild and Dreamworld, all of which we were all very excited about, plus we had managed to bribe the Welshies into joining us on our day trips also.

So Thursday arrived which was to be our first day exploring one of the theme parks. The forecast wasn't too great so we'd concluded that Seaworld would be the better option. All of us were up ealry and raring to go, excited for the day ahead. When we arrived at Seaworld, the first thing we did was watch a spectacular dolphin show which we were all very impressed with. Dolphins jumping everywhere, doing acrobats, impressive stuff. We then had a mooch around, saw lots of sharks much to Toms pleasure. Panda was happy that we saw a lil turtle swimming along merrily in the aquarium, whilst Jo and Jordan were in hysterics again over the stingrays faces. A big polar bear was a main attraction and we even had the pleasure of watching him 'do his business.' Tom got photographic evidence of that!!

We spent the day watching a couple of shows; one involving sealions who were part of a double act and were in search of some thieves. Random but good. We were then exposed to some crazy stunt show on water with people on jet-skis and water-skis. Again very good, the stunt artists were more than happy to water ski behind a speedboat at about 80km/hr using their feet as skiis!!!!! Painful. All in all though, a good day had by all.

Evening came and after a busy day, the only way to chill out would of course need a glass of goon! So one glass led to another and before we knew it we were off to the Avenue and crawling home in the early hours of the morning. Now, bearing in mind where we were staying was swarmed with rowdy schoolies, we were sure we were the only backpackers. We had all grown used to spotting them with their yellow fluroescent bands and intelligent questions/statements such as 'are you a schoolie???' or 'You've got food, gimme some!' or even 'you're not from Australia are you?' Plus we had had to endure hours of screaming, girls flashing, people chanting across to other balconies on other hotels til 6am, horns blowing, generally as much noise as you can expect from a party as big as this. We return home from ONE night out, 5 English people, 2 welshies. Yes, we were a bit merry, yes we could have been a bit quieter, but this was our night, our time. Ten minutes into our power-ballad/classic boyband sing-off on the balcony, there was an almighty knock at our door. Tom - the brave, went to investigate. It was only a Security guard.....with a FEMALE SCHOOLIE in tow!!! We were shocked, angry. Apparently we were making too much noise and then a guy on the ground radioed through saying that the girl on the balcony was being disruptive. The security guard walked through our room as Tom slammed the door in the female schoolies face. The girl allegedly creating disruption on our balcony, that we had paid to be on, was Jo who was quite happily dancing away. She cowered in the corner as the security guard questionned her unnecessarily!! Once he was happy that all was well in our room, he returned to business...whatever that was! We were fuming, cheek of it!

Next day we awoke on a happier note, ready for Movie World!! This is owned by Warner Brothers (along with Wet n Wild and Seaworld) so we were all very excited. Again this was a short bus journey away and the forecast wasnt wonderful but that we werent too worried about as we knew we would have to spend a bit of the day in queues for the rides. Once we'd pulled up at Movie World, we walked through the gates and were instantly taken to another world. The only way it can be described is like a mini-hollywood with film characters walking around and shops dedicated to big Warner Brother films such as Harry Potter, Shrek, Superman and Batman. There was a lot to get through in one day with the shows and rides, so the first port of call was a Scooby-Doo ride.