05/01/09

Got up and packed all our stuff again, phoned a place in Hanbury to see if we could stay there, jackpot, we found a place with a room for 4. We said our goodbyes to the Dans and they managed to sneak out of a side entrance undetected. We followed shortly afterwards after stealing everything we could from the swanky motel. Someone put the left over coke in a Pumped bottle with a sports cap on it, as I picked it up it must have shook up and the pressure increased and blew the cap open and squirted coke all over the wall in the bedroom. Walked back down to the bus stop and worked on the foot tans. When we finally got to Hanbury we had to go through something similar to a game on the Crystal Maze to get in to the place. Because there was no one there we had to speak to a guy on the phone who gave us directions to the hidden door around the back with a safety deposit box next to it. We then had to give him someones credit card number as security before he gave us the code to the box which contained all the keys to every room in the building, including the office. After I had reeled off a list of all the keys over the phone he suggested that I take key 12, then quickly changed it to 3. We were then told we would have to wait until mid afternoon for the cleaner to show up and pay her in cash for the room.

We settled in and then went over to Woolworths to get some food in for later. We saw a pie shop on the way back that were doing pies at 1/3 the price of the pie shop in Sydney so we all got 2 items. Spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to organise a trip out to the Hunter Valley. Was reading on the sofa when the woman showed up so I payed her and then we stuck Finind Nemo on the TV. What a great film. When that had finished the girls started cooking a Lasange as we had a cooker for once and probably the best cooking facilities we would have in a long time. It was possibly the best lasange I have ever had, congratulations and many thanks to the girls for preparing the best meal ever. Went and chilled out in the room, watched a bit of Americas Next Top Model, what a pile of s***! Then attempted a game of Scrabble, I was far too tired to concentrate, Burns was getting 30 point breakers on just about ever go but luckily no one wrote his score down so when we did finally finish the game and added the points up Pat came out as the winner, Burns was pretty miffed.

06/01/09

Another early start for four of us, Pat remained in bed. We were picked up at 8:45 from outside the lodge by a guy that took us outside the YHA in Newcastle to get on the bus for the Hunter Valley tour. As we were waiting for the bus to arrive the driver informed as that there wouldn't be fog for long as 'the sun'll burn it away', classic. Got on the bus and had to just sit there with my eyes shut as I was still so tired from a lack of sleep. Got to the first place and all sat around in one large horseshoe while a guy came around and kept pouring loads of different wines in to our glasses to try. I'm not a wine buff and had no idea what to do, the tiny glasses they get you to taste from all point in towards the middle so you have to tilt your head right back and tip your glass to get at it, Burns and I looked like a right pair of alcoholics shotting wine all day. I was struggling to tell the difference between the different wines, some were dry some weren't some were red some were white, some were sparkling and some weren't, that was about the extent of my knowledge. Helen and Coops were like 'ooooh, I like this one, it's got a nice oak taste to it', what's wrong with a beer! This place also had cheese tasting, but nothing compared to the last cheese tasting we did, we couldn't just pick at whatever we wanted we were served tiny lumps on crackers and couldn't go back for seconds. There were some good cheeses, but I was hoping to fill up on them.

Got to the second wine tasting place, it seemed much less organised, you just had to go up to a bar and ask to taste one of them. A giant St. Bernard dog was loitering around behind the bar, we went up to investigate and were told 'He's got bad ears', Helen and Coops started petting it then some middle aged woman showed up and joined in, she obviously hadn't heard that it had bad ears and touched one of them and it went for her face. She looked in shock and the guy dishing out the wine shouted at her 'Look, I told ya he had bad ears! Don't touch his ears!' Then carried on pouring wine as if nothing had happened. Her lip and nose were cut and started bleeding a bit and the guy did nothing to help, he just carried on pouring wine, Coops asked if there were any tissues we could use and after a few minutes he returned from the back with a box and slammed them on the counter and got back to the wine pouring, all the while not even bothering to ask if the woman was okay. We all stood around a bit puzzled as to what had happened before getting back on the bus. The bus driver was a lot more helpfull and had words on the phone. When we got to the thrid wine tasting place the driver took the woman and her husband to hospital and left us to enjoy the tasting. They had 2 good drinks in this place, one was a strawberry based drink that smelt like jam and tasted really good and one was called the Dragons Breath which was meant to be shotted and was mixed with jalapinos so it had a nice spice to it afterwards. We then sat outside in the intense head of the day waiting for the driver to return from the hospital. This was the hottest day in Aus for 2 years and as we were inland what wind there was didn't cool you down as it was hotter than the still air around.

Our next stop was the chocolate factory, also no where near as good as the previous chocolate factory we'd been to. There were only a few different free samples to try which were handed out on a platter. They had chili chocolate that left a bit of a kick in your mouth and things like m&m's that had a coffee bean in the middle instead, they weren't too nice. Burns couldn't resist a chocolate strawberry on a stick. Our last stop was Lindemans vineyard where we got our final fill of wine before heading home, there were 2 good wines here, and even a red one that I didn't mind but I can't remember what they were. Burns and I had to de-shirt on the way back because there was no air con on the bus. I think the last wine tasting had actually had an effect on us becuase we spent the entire time on the way back going through disgusting would you rathers on a full bus load of people.

Got back to Hanbury and Eli was waiting at the corner for us. Had a discussion about what to have for dinner and decided on steak and chips, so it was our turn to go to the shopping while the girls chilled in the room. In the end we settled on chicken burgers and chips with beans, on the way out we suggested getting a six pack of beers in and Eli ended up getting a crate of 24. Coops was clearly not happy with the decision when we returned, think we should have gone for the 6 beef steaks. Cooked the food while playing P&A, once we'd done Burns Eli and I sat in the kitchen playing HCC and the name game until all the beer was gone. Pat and the girls went to the room. It felt quite bad sneaking in to the room to use the toilet every half an hour and trying not to wake every one up, but we've bee told we managed it. Eli had his own idea and decided that rather than use the toilet he'd piss in a jug and pour it down the sink, sick b******. He also enlightened us on the art of backwards s***ting if you're ever round someones house that you don't like. We managed to get an hour breaker in the name game before getting any repetitions, although we had resorted to names along the line of Penny Crayon by this time. Decided to go to bed, as the room was only supposed to house 4 people and we now had 6 Burns decided to sleep on the sofa in the kitchen, Eli had the matress on the floor and I took the floor beside the door to the toilet.

07/01/09

Although I woke on the floor at about 6 after going to bed at 2 I'd managed to get more sleep than the last 2 nights combined and felt rather refreshed albeit with a bit of a dodgy stomach. Got up and tried not to wake everyone while using the toilet to have a nasty beer/chicken burger turd and then showered. I couldn't find my toothpaste and had to use some rank green Colgate that looked like it was from Malaysia, it tasted awful. While I was cleaning my teeth I heard a nock on the door, Eli was there jumping up and down saying 'I can't wait any longer', he burst in and had a piss while I was stood literally right next to him. We quickly packed all our things and then took the bus to the Newcastle bus terminal. When we arrived Pat couldn't find his wallet and must have left it on the bus, luckily the bus we'd just got off was parked down the road and after a few minutes he managed to reclaim it. Helen on the other hand was not so fortunate, she couldn't find her iPod and we currently believe it is at the Hanbury Lodge. Said bye to Eli and got on the Greyhound. The bus stopped around an hour in at a service station and I was starving, I cracked and had to have a subway, followed by a sausage roll.

After the stop a guy got on and sat next to me and was doing the rankest farts non-stop from 11:30 until 3. Got to Coffs Harbour around 4:30 and were picked up by a guy that runs the hostel we were booked in at, that was a first. Got there and the place looked amazing, it has its own pool, a free pool table, living room with sofas and TV and a kitchen with ovens. It also has free internet which we spent all afternoon using to arrange the next 2 weeks of our trip up to Brisbane. We went shopping and got ingredients for Chili-con-Carne and had a scout around the shopping centre. The girls cooked whilst the lads and I made full use of the free pool table. The meal was superb, although Helen was not a fan of it. Spent the rest of the evening playing Articulate.

08/01/09

Got up and went to the shops, Pat and Burns got their hair cut, the girls went clothes shopping and I decided the time had come to get a new camera. In the middle of the shopping mall was some crazy sand sculpture that had taken a team of 8 people 300 hours to complete, it was amazing, hopefully I'll be able to put up a photo of it now. Bought a load of bacon from Woolworths and went back home to cook it. I had an epic topless frying sesh which nearly ended up in the scarring of both nipples, but it was totally worth it, we each got 2 large bacon sanies out of it. We then set off for a walk down the beach to the Jetty. The girl I was speaking to whilst washing up last night had told me that she had witnessed a body float up on shore the previous day so we thought we'd give swimming a miss as the waves looked rather powerfull. The lads and I spent the time walking down the beach looking for c*** shaped stones, we found one candidate but it was rather splayed at the tip and the wrong colour. We finally reached the area where the river met the coast and it was shallow enough to wade through, only about knee high, Burns had to get his white bits out because he was wearing combats, he looked rEdiculous.

Went in to a bar for a drink, we had to sign in as temporary members to get in for one drink, crazy! Played around with my camera for a while, it has some weird smile shutter thing on it where you press the button and leave it, then it only takes a photo when the subject smiles. It's the s***test function I've ever seen on a camera, you have to have you mouth so wide you get cramp in your jaw for it to work. On the plus side we all had our first 4X of the trip. Walked around a few more shops before heading back. Unfortunately on the way back the tide had come in and the river was now up to crotch height, I was the guinea pig and waded through, when I got to the other side everyone had decided to give it a miss and walk the long way around. Walked past the lifeguard lookout post and he was shouting over the tanoy for everyone to swim between the flags, it sounded like he was getting rather pissed off as he had to repeat himself about 10 times and still no one was moving back between the flags.

Went to Woolworths to get bits for toad in the hole on the way back, we struggled to find a one use pre-made batter thing, even after asking about 3 people in the shop, so we had to buy an entire bag of flour and eggs. Got back and the girls and I started cooking. It was all going perfectly until we checked on the batter, the oven hadn't heated up enough and it looked like a giant square pancake, so we made some more batter. This time we just left it a lot longer and eventually it rose, although the frogs didn't stay in the bog, they rose with hole and just sat on top of it. It was really tasty though. Had a few Carlton Colds before going to bed.

09/01/09

Woke up really early, my iPod told me it was 4am, tried to get back to sleep but couldn't so at 5am I walked down the road and decided to go for a run. Don't own any running shoes though so had to run barefoot, I think I must have run at leat 5/6 miles in total just doing laps of a giant field because I was running at my normal pace. Got back and showered all the crap off my feet and realised that barefoot running is the only way to clean travelers feet, my feet were the cleanest they had been in well over a month. Decided to walk to the Big Banana at about 11 because there's suppoosed to be 'heaps' to do there. The weather was awful, intermittent drissle all day. When we got there we saw the Big Banana and checked out the prices of the toboggan ride and ice skating, we couldn't do the ice skating though because none of us had socks so we went for the Toboggan Ride, but when we got there we found a sign telling us it was closed due to bad weather. So we walked back home.

Got back to the hostel and played monopoly in the afternoon. Rich monopolised the board on his first lap and left everyone else for dead. Later in the evening we all paid $12 to the guy that owns the hostel and he sorted everyone out with a BBQ with loads of meat and salads and as much punch as you like. The punch was just wine with a dash of pineapple juice, but it went down really well. We all ate and then drank a few cups of punch before getting the maxi taxi to the Coffs Hotel Bar. We had to wear shoes and trousers again to go out, my feet have now fully spread out from wearing nothing but thongs and now hurt when I put any kind of shoe on. Pat and Burns got a kebab on the way back. When we got back Burns and I sat in the garden drinking what was left of the punch and chatting to the bloke that organised the night out, he seems like a top notch bloke. Turns out that he only got out of prison 6 months ago and wouldn't say what he was in for. Some other Canadian guy was trying to impress everyone with stories of how great he was at everything, Burns and I were just looking at each other thinking isn't anyone gonna tell this guy to shut up and go to bed. No one did so I went to bed instead.

10/01/09

We were all woken by the bloke Burns and I were chatting to last night bursting into the room and shouting really loudly 'Right guys... horse riding...pick up at 9.15'. We'd said the previous day that we fancied giving horse riding a go. I felt like crap but managed to get up straight away and shower. We had to wear shoes and my feet were killing me from wearing them last night, I looked like an absolute tit as well with massive DC's on with a pair of shorts. Burns Pat and I all felt like s*** sitting waiting to be picked up I needed to be sick to get the rankness out of my body but it just wasn't happening, it was a scorcher as well which didn't make things any better. Got the taxi and struggled making idle chat with the driver as I'd somehow lost the shotgun-not-front again! All I wanted to do was sleep the whole way and what we were told would be a 10-15 minute drive turned out to be more like 45. We finally go there and to everyones surprise it was Coops that was sick when we got out of the car, nothing to do with the drink though, just the motion of the car.

We still felt like crap and all agreed that horse riding was the worst thing any of us could think of doing while feeling the way we did. Got our helmets, I was told the one I picked was too big so had to take a smaller one which clamped my forehead so tight I swear Burns and I will be able to make it past 20 in head tennis now. We were all dished out horses relative to our heights, I got Rocky, Rich got Echo, Coops got Zoro, I can't remember what Pat and Helen got. Started out and all my horse wanted to do was eat grass, luckily I didn't really have to do anything as Rocky was a pro and just followed all the other horses everywhere. Pats horse stopped at the top of the first hill and started eating the turd that the horse in front had just laid, and refused to move. His horse was quite stubborn it was funny watching him attempt to kick start it, one of the guides got him a stick and the moment he saw the stick being passed to Pat he was the best behaved horse ever. Burns horse kept on farting really loudly and Coops was just really slow. I was stuck behind Coops the whole time, eventually she got a stick and managed to get the horse to do a bit of trotting and Rocky just followed suit. It was really fun but not something I'd do all the time. When we got off the horses every one of us moaned about how much our legs ached and how sore our arses were.

Went back to the hostel and the lads napped while we sat round the pool reading all afternoon and topping up the tan. Eventually dinner time arrived so the lads and I went to Woolworths and got food. We mangaed to cook what I believe is our best meal so far in only half an hour, Spag Bol. I think the girls may have actually enjoyed it, but who knows for sure. Sat outside in the evening chatting to some random travelers because the film in the lounge was Zohan which looked awful. Watched the next installment of Heroes before going to bed.

11/01/09

Pat and Rich got to bed around 6.30 after watching the football. The girls and I got up and went to the beach for the morning, taking one of the surfboards from the hostel as we left, my foot was killing from wearing shoes yesterday for the horseriding. As we stepped on to the beach we noticed that the sea was quite rough, the waves were huge and none of us fancied going in so we walked right down to the other end to see if it got any calmer. We found a spot where other people were learning to surf and watched them for a bit trying to get ideas of how best to go about it. They were just riding the small ones in to shore, one of them managed to stand up a few times. Behind them were loads of really good surfers riding some monster waves. After a about half an hour I couldn't resist giving it a go so went and tried on some of the small waves near the shore. It's well hard, to start with you have to get out to the point where the waves are crashing to get a good enough one to give you enough speed to even attempt to stand up. If you manage to get a decent wave you have a brief window of opportunity to stand up perfectly in the middle of the board to make sure it doesn't tilt either nose or arse first and side to side. After what seemed like an hour of jumping on the board and falling off I managed to stand up and ride one wave all the way in, and I then realised that I wasn't having any luck earlier because the waves I was using weren't powerful enough, the moment I slowed down a little bit the board just sank to the floor.

The boys didn't show up by 1 so we left to go get some lunch. I had the worst pie ever, it was cheese, bacon and beef and was the dryest thing ever. We set off back for the beach along with Michael from our room in the afternoon. This time I wore a T Shirt as I'd chaffed my armpits, belly and nipples on the board last time. The waves were s*** this time though and it was pointless taking the surfboard, we were just getting battered by the froth constantly and being swept along hte beach. Decided to chill out on the beach and soak up the sun for a few hours before heading back.

The girls cooked a chicken stir fry for dinner, much better than our spag bol last night, even though that was the best meal we'd cooked so far. Watched the next installment of Heroes and read before going to sleep.

12/01/09

Woke up at about 9 and got our stuff ready to go to the beach. Had a slice of toast and found out that the lads had stayed up all night watching football again, so we woke them up at 10 and headed off for the beach at about 1030. Stopped off at the mini-mart on the way so they could get some breakfast, my foot was killing me by this time and I struggled with the final part of the walk to the beach. Got there and just layed there all day soaking up the sun and constantly applying sun cream to stop ourselves burning. Went in the sea after a bit, the waves were smaller today but lots more choppy so we had a good time launching ourselves in to all the froth and foam as it rushed towards us and knocked us on our arses. Helen got wiped out badly which was quite amusing. Everyone else went back at around 1300 but I couldn't face the walk back at that time. Coops came back at about 1500 and we just sun-bathed until 1730 then walked back.

Got back home to find that they had bought burgers and chips for dinner. After showering we sat around waiting for the oven to become free to pop the chips in. Some guy that had eaten chicken nuggets and chips the past 3 nights was having the same thing again, using all the oven space. Every time he went to check on the progress, which was about every 2 minutes, he would leave the oven door open for ages whilst turning each nugget and each chip over individually. The oven is s*** enough as it is, let alone waiting for it to heat up while that t*** attempted cooking, at one point I said to him do you mind keeping that door shut so we can keep the heat in, I was so close to twatting him round the head. One guy lost the plot and started cooking fish in breadcrumbs in a frying pan. We'd chopped the tomatoes by half 6 and managed to get space in the oven by half seven. We cooked the burgers on the BBQ outside when we put the chips in and ate them within 15 minutes. When we checked on the chips afterwards they were still pretty much just defrosted, so we decided to play cards until they were cooked. They finally finished cooking at half 8 and we had to eat them out of a frying pan because there were no plates left. Pat and Burns then had to have beer out of a cocktail glass because there were only those and shot glasses left. Had a cold shower and went to bed early.