Hello everyone,

It's been a busy week since I last wrote as we have just started our Oz Experience adventure so I hope I dont miss any wonderful escapades out!

We weren't exactly sure what to expect at Surf Camp, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but we were looking forward to it nonetheless. Having left Sydney at half past 6 in the morning, we arrived at Surf Camp at 5:30 in the evening - its a long trip! We were greeted by the General Manager, Kev from Doncaster, who is the most crazy person anyone could ever meet. Dinner was at 6, with the drinking games started at 6:30, where Kev was 'gonna get looose' (even though he had stated it was in his contract not to). As the night wore on Kev introduced more and more outlandish games, such as the clothes line game where each team had to make the longest line of the clothes we were wearing by tying them together, a game which left a lot of people scantily clad, and a few even less so. The night then culminated in a game of Ring of Fire! before people either crashed or passed out.

We were up the next morning at 6am for breakfast our surf lesson at 7am. Needless to say a lot of people were rather worse for wear at that point. Surfing is awesome. After our 3 hour lesson me and Brett were pros, probably able to stand up a good one in ten times. After Surf Camp was over, and Kev had told us we were his favourite group and mooning us, we headed up to Byron Bay, where we are now.

The place we are staying at - holiday village - is cool; all the people we met from the Oz bus are staying here. It also has free surfboard hire so me and brett have continued with our surfing lifestyle. The core group of surfers consists of Me, Brett, Dave (from back home) and Iain who we met on the Oz bus and we go out almost every day and are getting a lot better. Yesterday we were out in the waves waiting to catch that big one when all of a sudden Dave shouted 'Oh my God I'm not even kidding!', to which I expected to turn around and see a tidal wave. What was there was, about 10 meters from Dave, a gigantic black shadow in the water, and we immidately thought 'Shark!' and ran for the shore to save our lives. However, when Dave turned back to look, he saw a fin and the body of a Dolphin lift from out of the water and it was an incredible sight. Unfortunately the Dolphin swam away after that so we didnt get a chance to swim with it. Now we tell people we've had a run in with a shark!

The nightlife here is quite busy, with the biggest bar Cheeky Monkeys right opposite our hostel. One bad experience however, was last night when Me Brett and Dave were on our way down the street to the only bar in the town showing the FA Cup Final. On our way down we were jumped by three Australian kids who were looking for a fight, hitting me in the face 3 times and Dave once. We were eager to watch the football and didnt want to get in a fight so we didnt retaliate, but thankfully the a*******s (excuse my french) got there comeuppance when some Australian guys saw the whole episode and 'dealt with them'. Unfortunately, because of our rather dishevelled appearence after the little run in we were refused from the bar, meaning we couldnt watch the FA Cup Final, which was the worst thing in all of that.

As for our future plans, we leave Byron for Surfers paradise on Tuesday where I imagine we will continuing in the same vein, surfing all day and partying all night!

Till next time,

Will x