
I’ve not written one of these for a while, but due to popular demand (my mum and a few friends), I have decided to update my blog. As I was driving into work today, I was trying too decide which part of my trip, that I’ve been to lazy to write up, I should do first. It was at this point, I realised I had my ‘Aussie Bangers’ play list playing – for those of you who haven’t been blessed with this play list, it’s a playlist of over two hundred absolute classics (we’re talking ABBA, Greece, Bon Jovi, Cotton Eye Joe … you get it), created by yours truly, whilst very intoxicated, in order to keep myself and one of my best friends Alice entertained for what would be in total over 27 hours driving, up the East Coast of Australia. For those of you who don’t know Alice, she is probably the only friend I have who is equally as weird, crazy and generally strange as I am. For our close friends, the idea alone of us trying to navigate in a two man ‘campervan’ (hot metal tin with a mattress) through Australia, was amusing in itself.
So the story begins, let me set the scene. The plan was golden, we would fly to Sydney for New Year’s, then travel up the East Coast to Cairns. From the very beginning, we realised that maybe we weren’t the well organised roadtrippers that we thought, when we arrived late at our Airbnb and it took us over an hour to find the key, despite relatively clear instructions. We then spent a couple of days, adjusting to the jet lag and exploring Sydney before New Years. Again, the plan was solid but the execution was poor. We had pre-booked tickets to Luna Park, a theme park overlooking Sydney Harbour, where the rides were free all night, the food stands had been converted into bars and there was a perfect view of the fireworks. Sadly, Alice and I remember very little of the fireworks we travelled across the world to see, as we got, absolutely, shitfaced. The last thing we both remember is sneaking through a queue to ride the ‘wild mouse’, a kids ride, which drunk felt like oblivion.
So New Years came and went, and when we had finally recovered from our hangovers, it was time to pick up our home for the next 3 weeks. I’ll add at this point, I hadn’t driven a car in over 6 months and Alice hadn’t driven a manual car since passing her test. It was decided that I would do the honours of trying to navigate the campervan out of Sydney city centre. Anyone whose ever driven in a city centre will know the stress of this. But let me tell you, driving in a city centre, in a foreign country, in a clapped out campervan, slightly hungover and having not driven for 6 months, is a whole different story. Nevertheless, we made it and I only turned down two one way streets, which I take as a success.
As you know, with these blogs, I don’t like to focus too much on the ‘we went here’, ‘we went there for 4 days’ etc, as quite frankly, no one cares and those who do want help planning a trip, will probably consult someone with more knowledge. What I do like to focus on, is the stories that happen along the way, situations I find myself in and generally anything I find funny that other people might.
So at this point, I’ll skip a couple of days, it was really quite idyllic, riding on the open road ‘Aussie Bangers’ playing loudly, camping out and enjoying the views, without a glitch. We then arrived at Surfers Paradise. I will have to skip a lot out of this stop, due to the fact my colleagues and family read this, but I may have had the craziest night of my life (for those of you who know me, that’s a bold statement). But so you can get an idea of this night out, it consisted of an Irish man, a Scottish man, a group of Aussie Guys and two northerners, you can probably imagine. Alice and I had already discussed how tomorrow would be a long drive and we had to set off at 8am no matter how drunk we got. I ignored this completely, waking up on the other side of the city having met up with some friends who I met previously in my travels, at 8:30. Alice had managed to track my location and drag me up to walk back to our van. On the walk back, we met the most curious of girls. Fully dressed up, heals, make up, hair done (remember it’s 8:30am). She approached us and asked for a lighter. Now usually in a hungover state that would be the end of the conversation, but as we were still both half drunk, curiosity got the better of us and we asked why she was so done up at 8am. Most girls have probably been called crazy by an ex at some point, but I will say this now, you can hold your head high and know you have NOTHING on this girl we met. She explained to us, that she had found her boyfriend cheating and despite two restraining orders (that she had with her?), she had decided she wanted to take revenge. She said she had gone out the night before, taken a guy home, then woken up at 7am, left said guy with her dog, got fully dressed up and had just been to slash her ex’s tyres and was on her way back home. I’m not sure what drives a woman to slash her ex’s tyres in high heels and a dress at 8am in the morning, but I can appreciate the dedication.
Fast forward a few hours, Alice was nominated to drive that day, as I threw up out of the campervan window. We had a 6 hour drive that day and after 4 hours decided we’d take a stop at the beach to nap off our hangovers and revitalise. I didn’t make it to the beach and just fell asleep on a bench in the shade. After our little stop, both still feeling a bit worse for wear, we headed back to the van to finish the last leg of our journey and finally get a good nights sleep. But no. As if the hangover lords were trying to punish me for how drunk I had got the night before, the van … didn’t start. ‘Try again’, I said to Alice, after at least 5 times of trying with no luck. But sadly, the van was dead, despite our best efforts and the family picnic that Alice interrupted in order to get them to help us push the van. Long story short, it was a flat battery, we had to call out roadside assistance and after a long, hungover and embarrassing day, we eventually made it to camp.
Fraser Island, a world heritage listed island, 120km of beautiful sand beaches. Idyllic. A two day tour across the island, visiting beautiful places, hiking, swimming, but as you can imagine by now, Alice and Myself could give Carl Pilkington a run for his money in the biggest idiots abroad. We were with a tour of maybe 40 people and after a lovely morning of activities, they decided to spend the afternoon hiking through the sand dunes to see some natural pool. As my foot was still sore (see previous posts about me falling off a roof), I decided to sit out, what was described by our tour guide as ‘the walk of death’. I was told I could stay on the bus whilst they did the walk, but not to get out of the bus as it was a highly dingo infested area of the beach and they were likely to try and eat me if I was alone. Despite this, the bus was roughly 102837372 degrees and after ten minutes, I couldn’t bare it any longer and decided to sunbathe on the beach. I grabbed two massive sticks to fight dingos if necessary and settled myself in the sand. Meanwhile, Alice, who by her own admission, has never once stepped foot in a gym or done any exercise beyond necessary walking, decided that she would do ‘the walk of death’ in the heat of Australia’s summer. I managed to keep the dingos away from me and eventually people began returning from the walk. Time passed and the next group returned and the next group and the next group. It was at this point I feared Alice had intact been eaten by dingos as everyone had arrived back over 20 minutes ago. But no, we were all enjoying a coffee as the sun was beginning to set, on the tranquil beach and I heard her voice. ‘FUCKIN ‘ELL TREV BET YOU’RE GLAD YOU DIDN’T DO THAT’ and she appeared from the bushes, covered in sweat, 20 minutes late and full of regret.
Alice eventually catches her breathe enough when we get back on the bus to tell me about her walk. The tour guide advised that they take swimwear to swim in the pool at the end and cool down, Alice, who obviously knows better, decided that she would not take swimwear and surely she couldn’t get that hot that it would require her going in the pool above her knees. She was wrong and upon approaching the pool, decided that she had no option but to strip to her underwear and submerge her whole body. As we were hiking and doing a number or activities, Alice admitted she wasn’t exactly wearing her nicest underwear. Specifically, a old, nude over-worn bra. This bra was soaking wet and therefore she had decided to carry it back in her hat to avoid further embarrassment and let it dry out. Fast forward an hour or so, we are back on the bus, with these 40 or so, relatively normal people. We are happily relaxing, when suddenly a fly/wasp/flying bear came out of nowhere and landed on me. Out of instinct I grabbed the closest thing to me to swat the fly away. The closest thing to me was Alice’s hat. In one smooth movement I managed to swat the fly, at the same time (totally forgetting Alice had hidden her ugly bra in the hat) flinging Alices damp bra across the bus, with it landing perfectly across a ladies lap. I’m not sure who was most embarrassed, the lady the soggy bra landed on or Alice. I, on the other hand, found the whole thing absolutely hysterical.
We continue up the coast, the next trip was to do the Whitsundays. A three day boat trip, snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef. I must note at this point that this was my first step in conquering my fear of the ocean. Before this point, I had never been in the sea above my knees in my life and I was terrified of fish and quite frankly everything in the ocean. Maybe it was the nerves that caused this, that or pure clumsiness. But the night before our boat trip, we had parked up in a nearby campsite so we would be ready to set off in the morning. After a dip in the pool, we decided to pop to the shop in the van to get some food. As we’re turning out of the campsite over a speed bump, there was a loud bang. ‘What was that?’ Alice said. ‘Fuck knows, probably nothing’ I reply, neither of us phased, we continue to drive down the main road. Maybe 200 metres up the road, another car drives past us and a group of Aussies are shouting out their window, ‘Dude, your boot’s opens’. We pull in and I jump out of the car. ‘How bad is it?!’ Alice yells from the van. ‘Oh God’. In our campervan, when you opened the boot, there was the gas hob and all of the kitchen equipment. Looking down the road, I saw the entire contents of our kitchen with a good samaritan running about trying to pick it up. To put this in perspective, an entire chopping board had flown out of the back of a moving van along with all of our bowls and cutlery along with an 8 inch knife. Now I don’t know about you but if I was driving behind a car or walking down a street and chopping boards and knives were flying at me, I’d be a little scared. Thankfully, nothing and no one were hurt, other than our dignity. Maybe the most embarrassing thing to ever happen, walking along a main road picking up stray forks and bowls.
So, we did eventually overcome our shame and against all odds, arrived at the boat ready for our trip. The first half an hour was a safety briefing, there were two key rules. 1. Do not litter the ocean with plastic etc, 2. We have a limited amount of water on board, so use it sparingly. It was at this moment, that Alice’s two litre plastic bottle of water she’d just filled up, went flying across the deck and plop, into the ocean. For breaking the only two rules within 5 minutes of being on the boat, karma took it’s revenge on Alice. I think this story is always funnier in Alice’s words, so I have kindly asked her to summarise below:
‘Sharing a sailing boat the size of a fucking thimble with 14 other people is all fun and games until you get sea sick… We booked a 3 day boat trip around the Whitsundays and I know what you’re thinking…idilic. No. No it wasn’t. Firstly I do get sea sick so maybe it’s my own fault, however I know if I stay on the top deck and look out at the horizon I’m usually ok. HOWEVER! What you don’t see in the brochure is that January in Aus is actually wet season, so half way through the second day we hit a storm which can only be described as biblical…not being dramatic at all here. I had to make the tough decision of staying on the top deck and freeze to death or go downstairs and throw my guts up? I chose the later as the captain advised if I fall asleep I’ll be fine. Bit concerning as I had just eaten two large tuna wraps and lying down didn’t sound like the best option. Madly enough because I’d been getting about 18 seconds of sleep a night due to us sleeping in a sweaty tin can I actually slept for about an hour. Great. Until one of the guys fell on me and woke me up. I couldn’t even be angry as trying to walk around on this thing was so choppy it was being inside a fucking tumble dryer. So as I was woken rather abruptly I decided to go on the top deck (even though it was still raining) after having a super quick wee, I’m not even going to discuss the toilet on that boat because it was just too much. Seriously. Within 30 seconds of waking up I felt sick as hell and knew I had to get on deck to breathe fresh air. I was still sat on the toilet with my pants round my ankles when I realised it was all action stations go on the the sick front. Honestly the toilet was so bad I couldn’t even be sick in there so I dashed upstairs (pants still round my ankles) and spewed my guys up over the side. Nice little memory in life when people say they’ve scuba dived in the Great Barrier Reef and I’ve chundered in it. Anyway, standing on this boat, pants round my ankles, a sweaty head with hair mattered to the side of my face the captain turned round and yelled “You all good Alice!?” Holding his hand in the ok sign. “Yeah pal, I’ve just shot a chunk of mucus the size of a tea bag out of my nose, I’m doing great.” So being the dramatic bugger I am I sat down (PANTS STILL ROUND MY ANKLES) and the guy driving the boat honestly turned to me in the thickest Aussie accent and said “Listen, I don’t usually ask girls to pull their pants up but right now you’re a safety hazard and I can’t have you tripping up.” Lovely.’
So, we returned to our van and made the last leg up to Cairns. At some point in this journey, I had very drunkenly stated that now I had faced my fear of the ocean, I was capable of anything and should just face all my fears. My other main fear being heights. Alice then took this drunken information upon herself, found my card and booked a skydive.
This is all I have to say about skydiving, it feels exactly how you imagine jumping out of a plane feels. It’s shit scary and I’ve never understood why anyone would have the desire to jump out of a moving plane, I still don’t. Glad I did it, but never again.
Lesson learnt from my time in Aus: drink less.
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