Swings and Roundabouts...

...And yet again I take forever to update my blog...

So what have I been up to...Hmmm....

Lets start with Fraser Island... For those of you what don't know Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world... And some some reason they let people like me drive about in a 4x4 on it!

Basically Glenn and I teamed up with 9 other people at our hostel and we went camping on Fraser for 2 nights and 3 days, completely left to our own devices. And it was amazing!!
We were know as team 'E'.. our group was a mix of Dutch, German, Swedish, Aussie and English and we all got on so well, which was a good thing considering we were all together in one jeep most of the time.
As part of the trip we got all our food, so we only have to decide on how much beer to take... In the end we went for something like 3 crates of beer and 5 boxes of goon... Evidently, this was not enough and on the second night we had to buy some more!
We drove about visiting the sights of the island, like the lakes and jumping about in the sea for most of the 1st day. In the evening, some of us built the camp, tents, ect and the others cooked. Then as evening fell we all got chatting and played some drinking games... I evening managed to take some time out to just relax with a beer and lie down and just take in the stars, it was such a beautiful sight...
The next day we visited Champagne pools and Indian Head at the far north of the island, however due to the rough seas we moved onto a little beach rather than stay at the pools with the rocky paths.
I took over the driving for the rest of the afternoon, and it was great fun skidding about on the sand as we drove along listening and singing along to Queen on the MP3 player... Before we set up camp for the final evening we visited a freshwater creek. It was cold but very refreshing.
The evening consisted of more beverages and for me an early night as I fell asleep, mainly from to much beer!! hehe...
On our final day we stoped off at Lake mckenzie for the day - we ended up renaming it Pond Macca - not to sure why, it could of been down to the 3 bags of goon we started drinking at 9am!... Well we couldn't let it go to waste!!

All in all Fraser Island is beautiful and I made some very good friends while on the Island, and have been lucky enough to see some of them since.

I don't know if you guys have been viewing my pictures , but I have also stopped off at Noosa for a trip to Australia Zoo, the home of Steve Irwin. Personally I wasn't much of a fan of Steve's, but after seeing his work at the zoo and what he worked for, it was very emotional to see all the tributes still on show that are dedicated to the crocodile hunter. The zoo itself is very impressive and I managed to feed an elephant and stand right up close with a Koala, which was cool. Pic's here!

Brisbane
Is a really nice and chilled out city - reminded me a little of Manchester. I really liked it there, even if the Hostel we stayed at was very scummy. I was sleeping in a room of 16 people...not a good choice. The Swedish girls, Annelie, Hanna and Lisa come and meet back up with us and we had an eventful evening out on the tiles... Oh and thanks Hazel for the call at some silly hour in the morning...haha... Pictures...
My plan had been to stay in Brisbane and look for work - like I say I was enjoying the city, managing to get a couple of runs in and felt relaxed. But after registering with a couple of agency's, taking all the typing tests under the sun, I just wasn't getting any job offers. This was frustrating as Glenn and I had said our good byes and he was heading back to Sydney.

I was feeling quite low about it all really, I'd tried for over a week to get work but was getting nothing positive, I even looked at fruit picking, but there's none in the south of Queensland due to the bad weather earlier in the month. In all honesty, I even looked into flights home...
Positive news finally arrived, but there was a catch - it was work but in Sydney!.. So after carefully weighing up my options and speaking with my agency contacts, I decided to leave Brisbane and head "Home" to Sydney.... All be it via....

Byron Bay
Now this is the Australia I love... Hot days, beautiful beaches and even more beautiful people on them - of course I walked on the paths as to not cause offense to the better looking people!! ;0)
Again, I meet back up with Glenn and we took our Mojo Surf lessons at Lennox Head, just up the road from Byron itself - Glenn was a day ahead of me, but we still managed to surf together.

Surfing is hard, but it's such a rush when you manage to stand up on the board... I've got some pictures and will upload them within a week, hopefully!... I enjoyed the second day of the course as we just got to head straight out on the surf..dude!!..

Byron is the nicest place I have visited so far, and I will be heading back to there before I head home. Plus I can now say I have visited the most eastern point of Australia!

So that's about it... I arrived in Sydney after a 13 hours coach journey this morning. It sounds harder that it was, even with some Wino, drinking goon all journey and falling asleep on my shoulder - my elbow slipped and hit his face a couple of times!!
I'm back at harbor city, which is cool and I start work tomorrow - which is with MSF again. Only catch is it's only for 3 days a week at present, so will need to look for alternative work. Basically my plan is to save enough cash as possible other the coming weeks. The legend that is Ste arrives out here soon, so I will see him and at some point I will arrange to travel the west coast.

I have picked up and feel happy again after the fun I had in Byron, it's a shame I couldn't of stayed in Brisbane, but end of the day I need the cash to splash on my lavish life style out here... Right, I must go, need to head to Woolworths and buy my 8p noodles for the rest of the week!!

P.S.
It'll be good to know whats going on back at home so please drop me and email guys and girls...

G ;0)