Hello everyone,

Welcome to the first entry from Queensland. We have just crossed over the border from New South Wales and have just arrived in Brisbane.

Surfers Paradise was a strange place, especially as we'd travelled up from the tranquility of Byron Bay. With all the high rise buildings and Orlando based theme parks, it definately has a Florida feel to it, not really in keeping with the rest of the Gold Coast. However, it does have 40km of beaches so me and Brett could continue with the surfing.

We also met up with the girls (Alice and Catriona) in Surfers, and stayed in the same hostel with them so it was nice to be with them again. We also had a cool South African dude in our room, who was a pro at Chess and goes around the world competing for money! Apparently there's a pretty big Chess scene in Europe - that one passed me by.

Surfers Paradise, although rather notorious for its nightlife, was a bit of a detox session for us after the heavy times of Sydney and Byron. We only went out on saturday night, on a Pub Crawl which we got for $20 when the retail price was $55! We got the fishing rod out again in Surfers, and earlier today caught a poisonous blow fish! We had to gingerly unhook it and throw it back before we were poisoned. Also earlier on today we went Zorbing, which involves 3 people inside a massive plastic ball, and a rather large hill...it was awesome!

Hope everyone is ok. Til next time

Will x