G'day Mate!

So, our last blog left you hanging as we were making our way to Surfers Paradise where we arrived early afternoon and made our way straight to the bus to Coolangatta where Neil and Peihua were there to meet us and take us to their house in Tweed Heads for an overnight stay. The car journey took us down the coast and we were amazed with the views which were stunning. We had a couple of hours to chill out before we headed out for dinner, after a few unsuccessful stops in search of food we decided to eat at a local rugby social club which was, of course, perfect for Kie even though they were playing Aussie Rules on the pitch but rugby was on the TV!

The following morning we enjoyed a lay in with the blackout curtains keeping the early morning sunshine out of the room! We got up and got ready to head back into Surfers Paradise where we had arranged to meet Kie's friends from home, Staff and his family, who moved out here six years ago. Although we were only in Surfers for the afternoon we enjoyed the atmosphere of the city. We headed to Starbucks for a chilled out catch up with the Hurlstons for a couple of hours before we had to make our way to our bus stop for our next Oz Experience trip!

When the bus turned up we realised it was Papa Keith driving, a driver we'd had for our first Oz Experience journey and a couple of times during our trip! It's nice when you recognise faces! Not only was Papa Keith driving, but two Israeli girls from our first journey rejoined us and a girl we'd met in Rainbow Beach was also onboard! We made it to Byron Bay in good time and stayed at Byron Bay Holiday Village Backpackers which we thought was really expensive but it turns out, at $32 a night each, it was actually the cheapest hostel in the area - shocking! We didn't really do much when we arrived; as usual it was the settling in and doing the food shop at Woolworths before making some dinner and calling it a night.

Saturday came and we decided to make it a beach day, although we are tanned we don't actually do beach days very often and more often than not it's too hot to stay for any longer than a couple of hours. We arrived in blazing sunshine and set up our towels ready for our tanning session, despite the odd spitting showers, we got a couple of hours sunbathing in before we decided to head back to the hostel, just before it began to pour down with rain! We had hoped to meet Claire and Audrey, the two French girls we met on our Fraser Island camp trip, but we weren't able to get in touch so we decided to do something a bit different and go to the cinema!

After hearing lots about 'Black Swan' on Facebook we decided we'd give it a whirl, and wished we hadn't! It was a good film but not our cup of tea; it was a bit of a disappointment for our first cinema night in months! We arrived back to our hostel quite late and were just about to get into bed when Kie spotted a huge spider hanging over Clement, our roommates, head! Luckily he smacked it with a flipflop and we were all able to go to sleep, with one eye open!

On Sunday morning we woke up without any plans and pottered around until the early afternoon before heading to the beach with Clement for a couple of hours in the sunshine and mooching back to the hostel making a few stops in the shops and finally getting an icelolly to cool ourselves down.

On Monday morning we were rudely awoken at 6am by some idiot who had forgotten his key in the room nextdoor and continuously banged on the door for a good 20 minutes before anyone noticed and let him in. We were due to get the bus at 7.45am and didn't get back to sleep before waking up and getting ready to leave.

As we walked to our bus we were welcomed by 'Disco', our driver for the day, with long striped socks on and a chilled out surfer dude charm. Despite being sleepy we were ready to leave and we loved the atmosphere, even though there were only four of us on the bus!

Next stop, Spot X - Surf Camp! We'll update you soon!

Lots of love Sophie and Kie xx