Australia

Well contrary to our beliefs and to the two new towels we had bought in Sydney, the weather in Cairns was not Scorchio! Ah butts galore. What is the story Rory with the rain everywhere.

Nonetheless we checked into our ‘cell’ in Nomads Serpent Hostel and decided to take it easy for the evening. The hostel was pretty cool actually apart from the rooms (bloody bunkbeds & no where to put stuff makes for an uncomfy week). There was a big bar area, a pool, a beachy area for playing volleyball and lots of places to sunbathe as well as a big tv area, laundry room and kitchen.
The most impressive (and most used by us) being the bar area with eh.. the cheapo bar and tvs to watch the world cup on.
As most of the days were pretty overcast, we decided we wouldn’t go to hell if we stayed up late to watch football and slept late in the day – which we did. We did the usual exploration of the town to isolate the nearest food court, and generally bummed around watching football, eating wedges & drinking beer late at night and taking time to bump up our bellies.

After we realised that the weather was not going to get much better, we decided to do some adventure activities. I had a cold the first part of the week and I wasn’t too pushed on doing the PADI 4 day diving course, so we decided to book an Intro dive instead. We booked the introdive and some whitewater rafting. Woohoo

The rafting was fun but pretty tame. We bunked into a busload of other backpackers and made our way to the river. Me and Jim had an alright group, we were led by a kiwi, and had about 4 other birds in the rafting tub with us. There was about 3 other tub loads of Japanese girls who started out with us. It was gas watching them ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhing’ and squealing with delight and fear at every opportunity. There were two girls in our tub who were a laugh, and another two (irish) who didn’t say a word. We had a good laugh, but it was kinda like white water paddling instead of rafting. It was fun but I think next time we will have to do EXTREME RAFTING in order to up the ante. )

The only one who fell out of the boat was the guide as we went over a pretty exciting bump in the river. All in all, fun was had and after getting pushed off the tub into the river, I paddled downstream – still with my oar in my hand. All in all – twas a nice day.

The next day however was INTRODIVE DAY. Now as some of you may or may not know (depends if you’ve read the Galapagos blog), I am (now was) terrified of the sea, of being in the sea without any beach nearby, and of stuff in the sea – i.e. sharks. So the thought of doing a four day diving course was filling me with dread. So thanks to the short amount of time we had in Cairns and the cold I had, we put it off and decided to do an Intro Dive instead. An intro dive basically consists of a nice day trip out on a boat to the coral reef, where we can all go snorkelling and see some of the coral. Then lunch is served and then those who have booked an intro dive can do their stuff. An intro dive is exactly what it says on the tin – an introductory dive. They dispense with all the knowledge that you learn about buoyancy and other nautical nonsense and the dive captain takes you down BELOW.
Not before you get a quick briefing of what to do if you’re air yokey pops out and what exactly to do after you go down.
Well it all sounds very nice now doesn’t it…

Yeah right. First of all, the minute the boat got out on open water – the auld Galapagos Fever hit me like a prat out of hell. (ps – side note – I think we are flying over the Mekong River in Vietnam as I type – we’re on the way to meet John & Karen in Thailand. :p )
as soon as the swaying began, I started to feel ill. Then I started to feel nervous about doing the diving. After a swift trip to the bogs (any longer down there and I wouldn’t have been able to get back out of there), I decided the only way to stop the ill feeling was to go snorkelling. I have never EVER been so delighted to get into the sea! I had a short wet suit (as we were going diving later) on and it actually made me a little braver. I launched myself in and awaited Jimbob, who had to return to put Vaseline on his moustache. Lol. (Jim adds – ‘they had no Vaseline left so I had to use Industrial Strength Lube). Lol almighty.
Anywho whilst waiting I snorkelled off on my own for a bit and I LOVED it. It was so cool. The reef (er) lol.(not) was amazing and very beautiful. There were so many colourful fish all a couple of feet below my belly. The current was very very strong and I couldn’t go too far. It kept pushing me to the edge of the reef, beyond which was a deep deep empty pool of dark blue. Upon seeing the vastness of nothing, I got a little scared and returned to the boat to wait for Jim. Then we tagteamed around the reef, making sure to keep one another in view. We saw sandsharks, GIANT wobbly looking fish with big lips, some nemos, plenty of angel fish, a gorgeous shiny white fish and I saw a small reef shark. And I wasn’t scared! Whooo.ooooo..ooo.. etc. etc. unfortunately for us, the current was so strong, that we kept going around in circles seeing the same bits of reef over and over again. But it was hella cool. I kept thinking how great I was at snorkelling now. Pffft – I know – lamo. But I was hella proud.

Not long did the pride last.. We suited up for our intro dive and some guy put some heavy things around our waists. There were four of us, dangling in the water, hanging on to the back of the boat, underwater. We were all aired up and sent below. Whereby I could not get the breathing right. (I was doing it wrong – but it wasn’t my fault, the guy earlier had told us to let all the bubbles out of our mouths.. or had he.. I dunno I was too seasick).. anyway, I kept doing it wrong, taking in a wad load of water and shooting back up, popping out of the water just in time to see some long haired dude have a right auld chuckle at me and send me back down again. It took me three goes to get it right. I was afraid the others would run out of air. In actual fact, I only got it right by a fluke, I was praying to god that my air yokey wouldn’t pop out underwater or else I’d be rightly fewked. :/
So eventually we all went down underwater, linking arms with each other and our dive master. Now our dive master was in a bad mood already. He said we were group 8 and he was pissed off with everyone disobeying his orders throughout the day.
Welllheelllehllll. Fandabbydozey.

So with strict instructions from grumpyhole to stay linked and stay together, we all go swimming off in a straight line.. Now I am freaked and don’t’ want to let go of yer man, plus my mask is all fogged up and I can’t see a fecking thing. So when the dive master guy makes the ‘walky’ motion with his fingers, I don’t see anything wrong with Jimbob going off for a stroll by himself. Only that the ‘walky’ motion actually means ‘kick yer flippers you lazy bastards’ and not ‘take some leisure time to explore the ocean for yourselves’. Lol. To cut a long story short – cos I’m on a plane and not arsed with putting everything in the right order with all the details, we made a balls of our dive and only got about 5 minutes underwater.

What a gip. Twas only on the walk home with Jim, that I found out what I had been doing wrong with the breathing..

Me: “OHHHHH I thought yer man said we had to blow out the bubbles, no wonder I had no breath left and kept taking in all the water… ooohh I see, well maybe if we do it again I’ll get it right. Yeah I’ll have to try that again.. that dive master was a grumpy bollix wasn’t he? I can’t believe I was doing it that wrong. They didn’t explain that properly. I think I’ll send them an email and tell them they should be more clear…
Jim: (to himself) De de de de de de dededede De de de de de dedededed

So after all that, I’d definitely like to go diving again, only next time I will definitely do the 4 day course yokey. In fact, I may do it here, in Thailand.

Cairns itself is a bit menemeneh, but the reef is cool and I would definitely like to go back some day and see it again. (Adds in Laugh after trying diving in Thailand – aHAHAHAHAHAHAHA shambolica)

So it was back to the Ritz, for one week before we were to leave Sydney. After settling back into our lil crappy room as with all the little crappy rooms after a few hours and scattering our bits n bobs around the place, they become home. Living next door to a dominos pizza and about a 5 minute walk from Chinatown, we were sorted for cheap backpacker eats. This week was to be our touristy week, luckily we had the weather for it… MOONSOON weather! It pished down rain for nearly every fecking day that week bar one, the day we decided to go and see something outside of the city, the Blue Mountains tour. For that we had perfect sunny weather.
We set off in a little tour bus from our hostel at like 7amish. On the bus were a couple of fat English girls think “Tracey and Sharon” types. Who munched the day away in the seat infront of us. One English guy who was a bit of a talker and a young family who turned out to be den den deeen.. Oirish! From Kerry or Cork god love them, although the dad was originally from up norfh England and the mum was very chatty and good craic. Our tour guide was a jolly Aussie girl with south American blood in her somewhere along the family tree.

We set off for first stop Wildlife park, where we got to see lots of native animals like Wombats, Kangaroos, Koalas (which, translated from Abo means; “I don’t know.”) We also saw a giant croc, lots of birds and some cool snakes and spiders that kill. Australia contains the most dangerous animals in the world. After the zoo we made a brief stop at a pretty amazing view of all the mountains and bush sprawling out beneath us as far as the eye could see. Then it was onto some really amazing views of the blue mountains at a place I cant remember the name of lol. We went on a bush walk down into the dense bush where our guide showed us lots of cool things like waterfalls that looked like Witches Faces & Sydney funnel web spider holes (luckily they were in hibernation. They can kill with one bite). When we reached the ground level of the bush we had to get a cable car train thingy all the way back up. Now as stated many a time in this blog JAMES DOES NOT LIKE H E I G H T S! this thing was pretty scary. It was like a little roller coaster that came down to pick us up and then simply just gets pulled up the mountain side nearly fecking VERTICAL and at speed. I think it’s the longest vertical train ride in the world or some silly fact. So after a few heart booming minutes we reached the top without the cable breaking and us plummeting to our death as the movie in my head was replaying during the ride. At the top by the gift shop we got to hold and feed some friendly wild birds (see pics). Then it was onto a winery where we got a nice buzz from drinking as many wines as possible in the allocated time. Then it was a whiz through visit of the Olympic village and a boat ride back to Sydney harbour. That was nice as we got to ride directly under the harbour bridge and by the opera house. We ditched the English guy on the walk home when he started to mention he was travelling with his guitar!! Guitar + backpack = hippy. Go hug some trees somewhere else.

For the rest of the week we spent it checking out some nice restaurants in the evenings (“Spice I am” five minutes from us being the best Thai food we ate in Oz) and shopping during the day and checking out various sights in Sydney such as the old part near the bridge and watching silly amounts of family guy and American dad before bed.

Sydney was approaching world cup boiling point as it was their first time in the comp for 34 years. We went out to watch the Japan game, which they won and all went loolaa. The Saturday night Beran and his mate Juggy took me to watch a Sydney swans game which was great fun as we were sitting right behind the goal where Beran and Juggy shouted endless abuse at the mullet on the opposing teams’ (St Kilda) full forward. Also there were shouts of encouragement at a guy playing for Sydney that they went to school with. Then they noticed another guy from their class was an umpire… poor guy got so much abuse from them. After a kebab and more beers we watched the England game and eventually called it a night.

The Sunday was the Winter Sounds festival!! Woohoo we were really looking forward to it. Camp-scarf-wearing Beran and Juggy collected us from the Ritz and we made our way to a pub next to the complex. After a few drinks one of their mates a resident dj about Sydney joined us for the evening. We checked out the end of Luke Fair’s set, then the beginning of DJ Sneak’s set. (he started off with Alan Braxe – Running an old favorite from clubbing days gone by for Trigger and I :o) ) The highlight as expected were Tiefschwarz!!! They rocked it for about 2/3 hours where we bumped into an Irish girl from Clontarf who new Lisa lol.

Then we all ended back in the city for the afterparty, playing again were the Schwarz brothers followed by James Zabiela who was keeping things on a minimal tip..nice! After a few funny faces were being pulled due to excessive drink it was time to call it a night, and that was the last we seen of Beran and Juggy. With the usual onward travel hangover to contend with we battled on to our flight up north to CAAIIRRRNNNNSSSS!.

Well when we arrived in Sydney airport we forked out an extortionate 12 bucks for a 5 minute train journey into town. It’s like because it’s from the airport that naturally it should be a higher charge. Rrrippppp. Anywho we arrived at the cheapest place in town (50 oz dollars per twin room per night) and went to check in. at check in we realised that if we paid for a week we got a free night so we decided to pay for a week. “Do ye want to have a look at the room first?”, the English guy behind reception asked… “no it’s grand sure”, we says. Lol. The place was a dive. Perhaps we should have. Although to be fair, because it was so cheap, I doubt we would have moved even if we had seen the room. Tee hee hee. Crazy gypsies.

So we dumped our stuff and went off down to Sydney Harbour to see the Opera house
and Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a long walk, but it was a beautiful day.
I was in awe at the Opera house as I had always wanted to go there as a kid and I never thought I would get there. I reckon this is due to my best friend (when I was 8) moving to Oz, and I had promised I would go and have a look about for her. But I didn’t. he he.
Well really. I’m not five anymore ye know…
We took lots of pics and wandered around in the sunshine. Then I’m pretty sure we treated ourselves to a bit of grub at a nearby food court or delicious Asian food place.

The next day we met up with Beran – a dude we know from going clubbing in London all the time and from spending a week together in Ibiza last year. Beran picked us up outside our dive in his sporty car and his gei pink t-shirt. We were delighted to see an old friend and Beran brought us off for the day on the Beran tour of Sydney. He brought us to see Coogee Beach – where we went for a drink and had a yap about old times. Then he brought us to see Bondi beach which looked brill. Unfortunately it was about 14 degrees celcius and there was not a soul in sight. Usually though (apparently) it’s brill and we hear FULL of Irish. Then Beran kindly offered us a room in his gaff for a few days to keep him company. We were excited but we had already paid for the week in the krappy hostel. So Beran told us to make up some krap about a family emergency and tell the guy at reception in our hostel so that we could maybe reschedule our stay. We agreed, then got around the corner, looked at each other and decided we couldn’t say that knowing that it wasn’t true. So we decided to tell the hostel guy the truth and he was cool. He said we could rearrange our days for next week and we were chuffed. We spent 20 mins or prob more repacking our stuff that we had lovingly put on our krappy shelves for the week into our bags and off we went to the most beautiful, most fantastic hosue of all for a week with BJ.

We took it easy for the first day or two at BJs. Then Beran and his gorgeous girlfriend Claire brought us about town to markets, pubs, friends’ gaffs, restaurants, the movies and into town and god knows what else. We had a great time. Beran’s gaff is cool. He has a sauna and a pool, which despite the minus 5 degrees temperature, we made use of. The sun was shining after all!! We had a great time Noone could have done more for us than BJ. It was great. But before long it was time to stop imposing on poor Beran and hit our hostel again for our second week in Sydney.

But not before a boozy night out in Sydney with Beran and his mates. We went to some trendy bar in …… . We drank a shed load of beer and wine out on the balcony upstairs while talking to Berans mates Tom, Juggy et all…. Then we went to some dive in kings cross that was pretty crap and then onto a pool late serving beer bar where miraculously beran and I beat his mate tom and other friend phil in a game of pool lol. The night was traditionially rounded off with some Mc Donalds, where lisa couldn’t believe I was actually eating as I always go on about how crap it is etc. However, when you are twisted and there are very few food options left an have only has a lil to eat that day…. McDonalds sounds feckin greeeeet! So chips all over the cab ride home and some big mac iun bed ensuide. The next day we got to meet BJ’s mum sober and she made us some nice tea and dropped us into town to our mansion.

The flight to Melbourne was quite good actually; we got lots of free vino and food. Although we did have to put up with this tattooed kiwi girl and Aussie guy (trying to get stuck into her) behind us waffling away about her life and her boobs, some bits were amusing.

Anywho, we had a week in Melb to fill with excitement and wonder. Fortunately for Lisa I had been there four years previous and new where all the best bits were (Lisa Laughs)
i.e. record shops and shopping streets hehe. A Swedish guy at the airport information desk convinced us to stay in his cheap hostel in St Kilda and included a lift to it from the airport for a very reasonable price. St Kilda is a lovely little seaside town just east of the city. Its got lots of nice restaurants, bars and views of the sunset (See pics below).

The hostel turned out to be lovely, like a holiday inn room or something (which is a palace compared to some of the DIVES we’ve battles through). It did have free wifi which was a plus for me :op Also it had a resident cat that would sneak in our window if we left it open far enough. One night it snuck in so silently, crept around the curtains and onto the bedside table I turned - seen him, and nearly soiled the bed lol.

We decided to stay the week there and commute to the city via tram most days. The first thing that really made us realize we were really in Australia now was the birds. Not only do they have normal birds flying about but Cockatoos and Parrots are everywhere, Lisa thought some had escaped from a zoo or pet shop or something.

Well I’m not going to bore you with all the details of what we got up to every day. But the highlights were, me cutting and dying Lisa’s hair heh heh toni and guy - watch out; Eating cakes on Ackland street, checking out crown casino (I had to drag Kenny away from her slots which she so fell in love with in Vegas), shopping on Chapel street, grabbing a bite to eat in Brunswick, the Socceroos (cheesy we know) beating Greece (btw Melb has the highest population of Greek living in a city after Athens) 1-0 in a world cup warm up game we watched from Federation Square on big screens with pints and finally, going to see Brett Johnson who was djing in a club on the Saturday night. I knocked over one of Lisa’s drinks doing the robot lol.

I really like Melbourne city, its got a great restaurant and bar scene plus its very funky / trendy with lots of areas like St Kilda, Prahan, Brunswick all having a unique feel to them plus they love their sport and have some massive stadiums.

After a week in Melbourne it was time to catch an airport bus once again and head to another international departures lounge, destination Sydney.