Adam's Aussie Adventure

The Tides Change, And So On...

Stuff got real in the last blog.  This one is full of hope and doesn’t end on a down note, so here it goes:

After spending a few days in Mackville, waiting on the police and the bank to do their thing, we decided that it was costing us too much to stay at a hotel.  We had heard of a campground nearby, so we packed up and headed to Gumma Reserve.

It was a small open camping area with a river next to it and jam-packed with mossies (mosquitos to us North Americans).  We were only able to stand it for two nights; any more and our bodies would just be a giant mosquito bite.  While we were there, though, we made the most of it.  We swam in the river and swang from a rope into the water.  But we wanted more.  We wanted ocean.

We discovered that on the other side of the river there was a path.  This path lead through a forested area, continued through some sand dunes, and went out to the ocean.  Cool.

When we got into the river we decided to walk upstream a bit and just let the current take us to the path.  After conquering the river and got onto the path, I realized that I had left my flip flops back on the other side of the river.  It was too late to go back and get them, so I trekked through the forest in my bare feet.  Kyle and John were smart enough to bring footwear.

Oh, another thing about this forest: it was supposed to have two of the deadliest types of snakes living within it.  Luckily we didn’t see any, but when we got to the sand dunes we could see a bunch of old (or occupied?) snake holes.

We hopped over the dunes and swam in the ocean.  It had been about five days since we had seen or swam it, and with all of the bad things happening it was nice to get there.

But we left Gumma.  On the way out we found out that a week or two before we were there the water in the river was about eight feet higher.  We probably should have looked into the place a bit more.

Once John had his banking stuff settled we were able to take off again.  Next stop: Byron Bay.  Mode of transportation: Rods.

Let me explain.  Ever since Rod, the Aussie in the Land Rover on the beach, had picked us up, we started calling this way of travelling “getting a Rod.”  Also, “Rod” sounds like you’re saying “ride” with an Australian accent.

So we Rodded about four times that day: two were locals and just drove us ten kilometers each, one was on her way to Coff’s Harbour, the next biggest city, and the final one drove us to the train station in Coff’s Harbour.  We got sick of waiting for Rods to come.

We arrived at Byron Bay and stayed a night in a hostel.  We then went to check in at this new hostel that had just opened up a week before we got there.  As we were about to pay for four nights, a lady walked up and said that they needed more people to work for accomidation.  Kyle hastily took back his credit card and went to work.  I went to work an hour later.  There was no work for John… until the next day.  So now we are living, for free, at a brand new hostel (Nomad Oddessy if you want to look it up).  We work 5 hours for four days and then we have three days off.  20 hours of work for a place to stay for a week.  We’re cool with it.

And that’s what’s going on right now.  Gotta go though, internet is running out!

Next on the Aussie blog: Drama! Excitement! Heartbreak!

G’day everyone!  Boy do I have a lot to tell you.

So when I last left off we were camping on the most beautiful campsite we will probably ever camp on.  We were able to look at stars for the first time on our trip, and boy were they gorgeous.  It wasn’t the best sleep I had, but waking up on top of the world with a first hand view of everything amazing made it all better.

We ate some breakfast (cold canned food), packed up our belongings and headed out.  At the bottom of the ridge we had found a path that we decided to take.  It lead to a beach that no one seemed to go to.  Blocking off the beach were some large rocky cliffs.  Kyle and John decided to walk around these cliffs, into the water, with all of there belongings in garbage bags to keep them safe.  I thought that it was a foolish risk and opted for the extra 15 minutes walking back to the road.  They were able to get to the other side without getting their packs wet, and told me I missed the best part of the trip.  I still don’t regret it.

We then walked the beach to another beach, where we decided to swim.  After drying off we walked the rest of that beach, which was probably 3 or 4 kilometers.  We got to a road when I realized that I had left my water bladder back on the beach.  It took me close to an hour to walk there and back.  I have the burns on my legs to prove it.

I got back to the guys, rested, and started walking on a road that kept going uphill.  I was very tired by the time that Matt pulled up next to us, asking how we had gotten there.  When we told him that we walked, he told us to get in.  He would drive us to Cresent Head, our next desitination.

Matt was listening to Janis Joplin’s greatest hits album.  He was drinking a beer.  We were driving on a terribly bumpy dirt road.  He saved us a lot of walking.

He showed us around Cresent Head and then dropped us off on the main street.  From there we called a hostel that picked us up.  They picked us up in a Land Rover that smelled musky.  “Oh yeah,” the man said.  “A few weeks ago I was driving and all of a sudden the road had about six feet of water on it!”  Good Lord!  How did he get out?  “Well we got up on the surfboards on the top and paddled for 14 kilometers!”  I then understood why the seats were a bit damp.

We hung out at that hostel (Surfari) for a day, then got a ride into Kempsey.  From there we were able to get a ride down the Pacific Highway from a nice man named Lindsay.  Lindsay had been married before, but his marriage fell apart.  He was a male nurse, so he then went from state to state in Australia, working.  He had finally returned home because his mother was ill and needed a nurse.

He told us he’d drive us about 40 kilometers down the highway, which was 40km out of his way.  We thanked him very much.  He made a suggestion of a town that we should visit before going to our destination of Coff’s Harbour, the next big city.  South West Rocks, he said.  Kyle had read about it and it seemed like a nice place.

When we arrived Lindsay proceeded to show us around the entire town.  It turns out that he grew up in South West Rocks, and knew everything you can know about the place.  He must have drove around this small town for an hour, turning down every road.  I was actually having a great time.

He then drove us about five kilometers out of town.  We had asked if there was a good spot to camp for free, so he brought us here.  He would often drive out here to fish and then fall asleep.  We gave him five dollars to which he went to go spend on beer.  I’m pretty sure the drinking and driving laws in this country aren’t very strict.

So now we were nowhere.  We ended up walking back into town, not happy with where Lindsay had dropped us off.  We got a ride with some nice German guys who had rented a camper van for 4 weeks.  They dropped us off on the highway.

Now it was getting dark and we saw storm clouds approaching.  No worries, it looked like it wasn’t going to hit us.  We were wrong.

Let me just say this: Mom and Dad, thank you for my birthday present.  The waterproof jacket came in very handy that night.

We were soaked and on the side of the highway, hoping someone would pick up some hitchhikers in the pouring rain, lightning crashing down.  Yeah, that horror movie cliche.  That was us.

Our stuff, on the side of the road, almost got swept up in a current created by the rain.  It kept getting bigger and bigger.  Finally the rain stopped, and our stuff was okay.  Well, it wasn’t submerged in water.  We had rain bags for them, but we didn’t know how well they held up.

Just when everything was looking it’s bleakest, Nathan pulled up.  “Where’re you goin’?” he said.  “Anywhere!” we said.  He then got out of the car, put his beer bottle on top of the roof, and helped us put our stuff in the back seat.

He dropped us off at a 24 hour service station in Macksville.  I was able to find a room about a block down in a place that looked like it had used to be a brothel.  But it was cheap, and we needed to dry our stuff.

John, on the other hand, hadn’t been impressed with the amount of money he was spending.  Kyle and I offered to cover the room and he could just stay there, but John had his pride.  He was just going to sleep out on a bench or something.

I didn’t want to argue.  If he didn’t want to sleep inside tonight, then that was fine with me.  I mean, we were in Macksville.  What could go wrong?

I woke up, took a shower, and then found out that John had been mugged in the middle of the night.  He was sleeping on a bench outside of a grocery store when an Aboriginal man creeped up, looked at him, grabbed his guitar case, and ran off.  It was all caught on camera.

Inside his guitar case, amoung other things, was his guitar, his Macbook laptop, his digital camera, and his wallet.

The guitar and case turned up pretty quickly.  It has been sent off to Port Macquarie for fingerprinting.  Everything else has yet to be recovered.

The people of Macksville have been incredibly kind though.  It’s a small town where everyone knows each other, so it’s more than likely they will find the guy who robbed John.  We just don’t know if the belongings will turn up.

So we’ve been hanging around Macksville for a couple days while John gets his banking stuff sorted out.  We may be out of here by tomorrow, but we’ll see.

So that’s the update.  I’m currently at Macksville Library, using their computer.  Everyone knows about “the Canadian who got mugged” and has been helping John out a lot.  It’s really great to see.

Anyways, when more news comes about, I’ll be sure to post it.  Thanks for reading this long one, but I think it was worth it.  Until next time!

We're Still Going Strong!

So, where did I leave off?  Newcastle?  Okay, I’ll tell you about Newcastle.

The first day was standard; we went swimming, walked around town and hung out at the hostel.  The second day we were on a mission: we had to find white gas for our camping stove.  We took a (free!) bus to a camping store, but they were out.  They suggested a gas station or a hardware store.  We walked to a bunch of gas stations but could not find any white gas.  One of the attendants pointed us toward a whole new camping store.  The walk continued.

On the way we found a liquor store where you could drive your car through.  How fantastic!  Too bad we didn’t have a car.  When we finally got to the camping store it couldn’t have been more out of business.  The only way we could tell that they used to sell camping supplies was the sign on the building; the rest of it was empty.

We headed back, this time on the way to a hardware store we heard about.  Luckily they had the gas.  We caught another (free!) bus back to the hostel and rested.

After resting I had another mission: find cheap booze.  We had heard rumours of 5 litres of wine for $9, but so far we’ve only seen expensive stuff (you know, like $16 or $18 for 5 litres).  I had remembered going to a liquor store when I was in Newcastle three years ago, so I set out to find it.  It was actually quite easy to get to and I a nice feeling of nostalgia as I walked down Darby street.  The liquor store was different, but it was still a liquor store.  And they had 4 litres for $11.  Good enough for me.  I caught a (free!) bus back.

We drank that night and had a horrible morning.  We were planning on catching a bus to Port Macquarie.  Didn’t make it.  We booked it for later in the day.  I bought some sun glasses (“sunnies” in Australian) and went to the beach.  Then caught the bus.

When we got off the bus it was approaching 10pm on Sunday.  We had no idea where we were going to sleep.  Maybe a park?  Luckily, a few people had a shuttle to a hostel, so we went there.

The next day we set off to walk the beach, with the intention of camping on it.  It turned out just getting to the beach was exhausting.  We got there though, and walked down a bit.  Then Rod came.  He had a Land Rover.  Rod was our hero.

Kyle rode shotgun while John and I hung on the back standing on the bumper as Rod drove down the beach, beer in hand.  Kyle said he was going 40 km/h at one point, but I think he was going faster than that.  We got to the end, and then Rod turned down a one-way sand road with trees closing in on it.  “Duck!” he shouted out the window.  It was awesome, and was immediately reminded of Jurassic Park.

He let us out at the bottom of a grassy ridge that overlooked the whole coast.  We walked up and set up camp.  The view was incredible.  We saw how far Rod had drove (probably a good afternoon of walking for us) and the forest inland.  So cool that this was our first campsite.

There’s more, but I’m going to give someone else a chance on the computer.  If you want to comment just write on my Facebook wall.  Talk to you soon!

The First Blog!

Greetings from a hostel in Newcastle!  I guess I’ll get you readers up to date…

We got to L.A. and got to our Best Western hotel.  It was pretty nice, and we were pretty wiped since we had not slept yet.  We started to unwind when John realized that he had left his Macbook charger back in Windsor.  Needless to say, this put a big damper on the evening.  But, in the time it took me to soak in a bathtub and read a couple chapters of the late Michael Crichton’s book Travels, John had found one for sale on Craig’s List (an online free ad website, for those who don’t know) for 50 bucks.  For an extra ten bucks, the guy delivered it right to the hotel!  We were able to end the night on a good note.

The next night we went looking for Circuit City to get John a camera for cheap.  After following Kyle’s completely wrong directions, we ended up finding it.  We then took a bus down to the beach to see what the Pacific was like on this side of the world.  It was a really good time and we ended up walking about 19km before going to the airport.

A side note about L.A.: it’s a super cool place (from what we saw of it) and the houses there are gorgeous.  We didn’t see any celebrities (we didn’t have time to go to Hollywood) but what we did see was a lot of smog.  It really looked gross.  But aside from that, L.A. is really cool.

Now to Australia!  We got off the plane in Sydney and found out that to get to Manly beach (our intended destination) would cost us over twenty dollars!  We decided to shop around and found out there was a bus that took us to Bondi Junction for only $5, and we only needed to pay another 1.90 to get to Bondi Beach.  Perfect!  We get to the beach and find a hostel called Noah’s.  It was probably the worst hostel I’ve stayed at, but it wasn’t terrible.  It was, after all, on the beach.  We went swimming after getting situated in our rooms (John was in a separate room since there wasn’t enough space for the three of us in one room).  After swimming Kyle and John cooked pasta while I went to find beer.  I enjoyed the food but John and Kyle are too picky, so they weren’t happy with it.  I only had one beer before retiring to my bed, but John and Kyle played Ring of Fire, the Australian verison of Kings (a drinking game) with some people.

The next day we took off to see the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  We didn’t have to get off of the train platform to see it so that saved us some money.  We then took a train to Newcastle and found a YHA hostel that was infinitely better than Noah’s.  We were only planning on staying one night but it was so good we stayed an extra day.

I’ll post more later, the time’s running out on the internet.  See ya!