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!

Spring Break! (part 2)

(This is a bit of a long one!!) After a very stressful first day, we woke up bright and early as the sun rose to expose the car park we'd spent the night sleeping in. Despite the setting, morale of the group was high, we all got up, had breakfast, took some pictures, had some laughs, and were on the road again by ten.

The day basically consisted of a lot of driving... We had a long way to go, and had to catch up on the lost hours from the day before so there's not much to write about here. We all had our radios in sync and were all singing along to classics such as "I want it that way" and "Moves like Jagger." We'd been told by our mate Woolies that we should check out the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, so when we got there at around 3pm it's fair to say that we were a little underwhelmed - it was just a big model banana that you could walk through with a restaurant and gift shop where you could buy many banana related products. There was also a banana plantation and a big slide, but you had to pay to go to them, so we didn't. Since we were there anyway, it would have been a shame not to buy some sort of banana paraphernalia, so a few of us bought banana splits and banana milkshakes and went back to the vans.

The ridiculousness of the banana theme park was soon out of our minds when we got back to the vans and discovered a leaking green liquid coming from Matt's van. After much deliberation, the leaking stopped and we decided that there was nothing to worry about (or at least nothing we could be bothered to worry about) and carried on. It was probably engine coolant, which is pretty bad... but we had no troubles for the rest of the journey so it can't have been that bad!

We drove more and more north, but soon discovered that a bridge further along the highway was closed due to a crash, so we called the other buys from our accommodation who were doing a similar road trip to see what they were doing. They told us to go to Jake's town (Jake is a close friend of Kooloobong, who used to live here, but doesn't any more, but is still around quite a lot anyway - he's the one that taught me to surf). We put the name of his town, Brooms Head, into the satnav and followed the directions it gave us. It directed us off the main highway and down some country roads, and I didn't mind as such, but people weren't very happy with the way that we were going, so we pulled over so we could discuss our next plan. We spent a few minutes bickering, some were saying "this isn't the right way" but of course Matt didn't know where he was, he was just doing what the GPS told him! Thankfully, a few minutes later Jake and the boys drove past, saw us and pulled over. We were now one big, happy family of fifteen and could make our way to Jake's place.

Obviously there was not enough room for fifteen of us in his house, so Jake showed us a camp site nearby where we parked our vans and settled for the night. We got there about an hour before the sun set, so we could really appreciate the area. The site and views were absolutely beautiful, kangaroos were hopping around casually, and the site had its own little beach. After two long days of stressful driving, a dip in a sea seemed like the best thing in the world to us, and so that's what we did. The water was so much warmer than it was down in Wollongong. Charlie even thought she saw a shark or a dolphin!

Shortly after the sun set, the rest of the boys joined us since they went shopping (and Eric bought a huge knife which he named "the gator" - good old peer pressure) and the partying soon began! The Norwegian girls had their first go at the goon bong, some were successful, some weren't so much, but we still had a great time even though there was a thunderstorm pouring down on us. All 15 of us somehow managed to squeeze into the boys' 5 man van and we spent the night drinking and merrymaking. A little later on though, Jake and Eric had a bit of a drunken argument, and Eric ended up kicking the door of a neighbouring van! Obviously the owner was not very pleased, and called the police. They arrived, but only told Eric to go to bed, and that they would come back to deal with it in the morning, so the night died down at this point and we all went to bed.

The next morning, Jake had gone, and I was awoken with a call from Jake telling me that his parents would cook some food for us if we got to his house, so we tidied up the mess we'd left in the pouring rain and got out of there as fast as we could before any other campers could get angry at us for keeping their children awake all night (woops!)

When we arrived at Jake's house, his parents were making pancakes, fruit salad, tea and coffee for us! They even let us use their shower! Almost all of the fruit in the fruit salad was home grown by Jake's family (made it extra tasty) and so were the coffee beans. I don't drink coffee so I can't tell you what it was like, but it sure smelt better than what I'm used to smelling :p

After we were all sufficiently stuffed and showered, we said a massive thank you for the generosity from Jake and his family and made our way to Byron Bay - at last! We had a look around the town, ate lunch (I had the most lush chicken burger), and found a camp site to park our vans. This site also had its own little beach so we went there until the sun set, and then headed back to the vans where we ate our tea and just chilled out together. We weren't going to drink that night, since we'd had such a hectic couple of days, but of course we ended up doing it in the end since it was Matt Barne's birthday! We started out at this place called the Beach Hotel, which played great music - a mix of eighties classics and modern dance tracks. This place closed at midnight though just as Matt's birthday ended, and Noor's birthday began! We bought Noor a couple of drinks (which he had to finish straight away since they were trying to get us out) and moved on to the next club - LaLa Land. It was crap. We went home less than half an hour after we got in. It was just too crowded and full of people who thought too much of themselves. After leaving here, we went back to our camp site and made our own party.

Our first day in Byron was great! The weather held out and everyone had a great night! There was more fun to follow - keep checking for more blog updates :) x

Spring Break! (part 1)

On the 23rd September 2011, one of our crazy plans actually came to life, and we left The Gong to get the train up to Sydney and collect our camper vans from Wicked Camping. We handed over the rest of the money and suddenly it was real - we were actually setting off on a road trip! So we left the depot, armed with five Norwegians, four Brits, three camper vans, two maps and a satnav - surely a recipe for success? We thought nothing could possibly go wrong, but we were sorely mistaken!

Everything was going great. I was leading the vans through Sydney towards the Harbour Bridge with a map hoping that we'd hit a petrol station on the way since they were all over the city and the vans had been given to us with pretty much empty tanks, but then Matt's car (who had the satnav) suddenly overtook. I didn't mind so much until they turned a corner at a traffic light which turned red before Amanda and I had a chance to follow him, but he didn't wait for us, and just sped off into the distance. Everyone started panicking, Everyone was calling everyone else and we tried to meet up again. I hate to use clichés, but Sydney is so huge and there are so many one-way roads that it was literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We decided that it would be best if mine and Amanda's cars pulled into a side road off one of the main streets in Sydney and wait for Matt to come and find us. Given that he had the GPS, we thought it would be easy and take no time at all, but more than an hour passed and they still hadn't managed to get to us. By this point the sun had set, people were getting angry, annoyed, bored and stressed, and tempers became frayed, so we just called them, told them to get onto the highway and meet us at the first service station that they see.

So Amanda and I drove around Sydney looking for a petrol station, and when we'd filled up we could finally hit the road and get onto the highway. We drove over the Harbour Bridge which was pretty cool, and after a good three hours of having our vans, we made it out of the city. We got in touch with the others and found out where they were, and aimed to get there, but first we stopped off at Woolworths (for the English reading, no it's not the confectionery emporium that went bankrupt a few years back, much to our disappointment, but one of the leading Australian supermarkets) to get some food and alcohol.

Soon after we'd stocked up on some essentials, we managed to reunite with the other van in a Baywatch-esque (but on a pavement instead of a beach, and outside a subway instead of a beach hut) slow motion run towards each other ending in hugs all around. We were massively behind schedule, so we just decided to drive as far north as possible and try to sleep in the vans at a rest stop. It got to about midnight and I just couldn't drive any more after only getting three hours sleep the night before (silly me leaving assignments until the last minute) so we got to the nearest rest stop, had a cup of tea and went to sleep!

What an eventful first day! We didn't take many pictures as we were too stressed but here's some snaps of us with two of the vans (click on them to expand) :)