Brisbane

Most of our first day / entire week in Brisbane was spent playing GTA IV on the xbox 360, it wasn't until our third day we thought we should check out the city. On fri night nick took the three of us out along with girlfriend lauren & flatmates to the normanby for a steak & drinks. We tried to after leaving the normanby get into a few pubs / clubs but there was always somebody in our group who wasn't appropriately atthired so we eventualy returned back to the flat after only being able to get into a dingy pub in the valley area.

The following day nick and lauren took us to a lookout point on mt coutha (?) for lunch followed by the planetarium where we learnt about the possibility of other life forms in our universe. That night was our mate sam's 21st b'day, he had hired out a pub called pig n whistle (which there are 4 of all over the city!) about a 20 min bus ride from the city. His parents had started a tab and forgotten about it until about 12.30 when it was stopped at $2,500! After this it was to the city to a club followed by a walk back to the apartment.

The following day we nick & lauren headed to the river where there was a asian festival taking place which took me back a couple of months . Then we took the city cat up and down the river which was a really good way to see the city, we each really enjoyed this, there are a lot of very nice apartments and boats along the river! That night bbq and movie courtesy of nick!

Bank holiday mon, the three of us went to a near by golf course and smacked a few balls and played some putt putt which is always good fun! That night we went to the cinema with sam & dec watched 'iron man'. We just pottered about for the next few days, went bowling the night before we left with the whole gang!

Then onto surfers.

The train from bis to the gold coast took about an hour, then bus into surfers. The train seems to be the 'bogan'/chav mode of transport here in oz. Arriving in surfers we found a hostel nearby the bus station met up with laura & lucy as there were there same time and went to the beach. The beach was very average (really long though) but it was a bit windy, sand was going in my eyes, too shady and there was a life guard with the deepest aussie accent blaring out to people in the water telling them to stop doing various activities. So we headed back to the hostel after about 1/2 hour. That night we had a few drinks in L&L's campervan before going to a few pubs/clubs. The next day involvedhanging around & watching movies away from the beach. The following day (sat) we met sam who gave us a lift to byron in his mums audi, the drive was about an hour or so. After we checked into our hostel we headed straight for the beach, and did some body surfing as there was a decent swell. That night was a few beers/wine then onto the legendary backpacker bar cheeky monkies. Pretty good, lots of dancing on tables etc. This was the template for the week almost, on sun sam made a bucket 'goon punch' an aussie ritual, basically involved wine with an assortment of different fruit juices, fruit, ginger ale, wasn't great, i'm not going to lie. Afterwards we sat on the beach around probably the worst camp fire i've ever seen, kerosine was being used to keep the fire alight, shocking some people need to go to asia! But there were acoustic guitars and sing a long songs so we stayed there a whilebefore returning back to the hostel. Sam left back to brisneyland the next morning. Wednesday we had a surf lesson with an ex pro who we met on the beach the previous day, pierre was pretty good, actually we were all pretty good, towwards the end i was carving up those waves something stupid! I was really good when practising on the beach which tailed off when i got in the water but i got to grips after a few unsuccesful attempts. Really good fun, we felt we couldn't leave aus never having surfed, and i had a really good 10ft board, perfect for beginners.

On to sydney via an overnight train.