Spring Break (part 5)

Sorry for putting this last instalment of the trip off for so long, had a few deadlines... At the end of the last blog, we'd just been out to Cheeky Monkeys for our last night in Byron Bay. We woke up on the Thursday and had heard that the weather was going to be rubbish, but that it would be great on the Friday. We made a unanimous decision to leave Byron on the Thursday and get to Hamish's house, spend Friday on the beach, and be back in Sydney by Saturday. We managed to tear ourselves away from Byron, bid it fair well, and were soon on the highway... but made a McDonald's stop less than 10 minutes into the journey.

The day was long, especially if you were a driver. It mostly consisted of long straight roads with nothing but fields and petrol stations dotted along the way, but a couple of hours in, things got tense. My van was in desperate need of petrol, so I pulled in to a filling station, hoping that the others would follow... they didn't. We saw the boys' and Amanda's van zoom off into the distance and leave us in their dust cloud. Luckily, Matt's van needed petrol as well and pulled in at the same petrol stop, so at least we weren't alone.

We called the others to let them know what had happened, and set off again. They must have gotten quite ahead of us because no matter how fast Matt and I drove, we couldn't catch up. We decided to take it a little easier (after all, those vans were definitely not designed to go any faster than about 5 kph) and stick to the speed limit. A few kilometres later we passed another petrol station and I saw 2 camper vans, but by the time I'd clocked who it was we were well past it! At this point, Matt and I started to have some fun and we decided to overtake each other every time we got to an overtaking lane, which seemed to pass the time fairly efficiently.

A little later on we decided to take a rest, and told Matt, but he missed the turn off, so now we were separated as well. We continued on, and the weather decided to take a turn for the worst. It started to rain, and the wind got very, VERY strong. Driving became hard, and I really did think the van was going to blow over at one point. On top of this, the sun was rapidly setting and plunging the roads into darkness. I'm never taking street lights for granted again. Meanwhile, we found that we had overtaken Matt while they were resting, so given the harsh weather conditions and the fact that Matt had the satnav, we decided to make sure we got back together and met up in the next Woolworths. We told Amanda and the boys what we were doing, and waited at the exit of the car park for them to catch up, and when they did we got back onto the road and were all together again! The weather had died down a bit by this point, so I wasn't so afraid of being responsible for the deaths of two Norwegians.

It was getting close to 9pm when we finally arrived at Hamish's house. It was great to be under a proper roof and for once, and it was fair to say that we needed a bit of a drink! We partied the night away...

The next day, as predicted by the weather forecast, was beautiful! We were down by the beach by 9am because we had to rush to tidy and get out of Hamish's house before his parents got back (it turns out they could tell we were there anyway...). We spent the day lazing around in the sun, eating barbecued food, playing ball games, and looking back on the amazing week we'd had. That night we went back to Ham's house and had one last party before we all got back to the Gong. That's what we thought at the time anyway...

The way a fridge should look!

On our ninth day we had to return our van back to the depot so we set off relatively early so that we'd be able to get them back on time. We waved them all goodbye as we handed over the keys. We were all so sad to have to go back to Wollongong, because that would mean that the trip was officially over, but then Hamish had a brainwave, and offered to let us all stay at his brother's house in Sydney. It was an offer we couldn't refuse since none of us were quite ready to go back home yet. We had one last party, wasted the girls' mascara on drawing facial hair on people, and I let Gus shave a downward pointing arrow into my chest hair. Silly me.

We stayed up until the early hours making the most of our last night (it had gone light by the time we went to bed), and just like that, it was all over. We returned home, sleep deprived and dirty after a week of not showering once. That night, once we were back home, we got the projector and had a slide show of all the pictures from the trip and enjoyed our last moments of spring break together.

Since then, it's just been back to boring uni, but there are only 2 weeks of lectures left, and after that 2 weeks of exams, and after that I'll be in New Zealand!! Really can't wait.. The Norwegians and some of the boys are going over now too, so it will be one big party all over again haha, I hope my liver's ready for it!