Working Holiday Visa

Noosa

SarahLeave a comment

Eight nights in Noosa was more than enough, but given that it was Christmas, it was a nice place to be. I had a brilliant first impression of the hostel – the person using the locker prior to me had left two boxes of tea bags in there. It’s a shame that they didn’t leave any decent (English) bacon in there too, but there is only so much that you can ask for.

My hostel was pretty far out from the main beach area. I ended up doing the coastal walk twice, as well as part of it on two occasions. I Googled the distance between the path and the hostel, so all together the long walks came to roughly 16.8km. It’s a good walk – quite a bit of willing too; I saw a few koalas as well as lizards – one was around a metre long nose to tail.

I was looking forward to having decent weather on Christmas Day – I’m never too fussed by it, but I’ve skiied on it before and it would have been quite nice to have the opposite. Instead, it rained so hostel movie marathon was in order, including two Lord of the Rings movies.

FB_IMG_1482921797227.jpg

Yesterday, I went kayaking in the Everglades. I’m still not too sure what an everglade is, but I picked the right day for it – nice and sunny. It was a tour group, and with these kind of things there is at least one boat that think that they’re competing in the Olympics. Well, that was the boat I was in, team Flashpackers Hostel won gold.

20161227_145243

20161227_143845-1.jpg

I’m having a quick stop in Rainbow Beach before going to Fraser Island, I’ll upload some pictures when I leave here.

 

Gold Coast/Surfers Paradise

SarahLeave a comment

I’d arrived in Surfers Paradise on Tuesday and just went out for a walk. The hostel had advertised a night out at a beer garden which is something that I was interested in (surprise!) which turned out to be a shit club with the name Beer Garden, so I left after 20 minutes.

It’s been a while since I actually did something, rather than sit around so on Wednesday I made the journey to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s the kind of thing that I assume is going to be for kids and entertaining their grown ups but figured that I’d give it a go anyway and it was quite a good day out. I learnt some useful information as well, for example, a platypus can run up to 40km/hour in short bursts.

I think that by now, I can write a lengthy book about how I’ve been woken/kept up by, and last night was one of those nights. I stayed in whilst two of my roommates went out, one of them came in at half 1, got into bed and made a phonecall until I called her out on her bullshit, which, apparently was ok because she was whispering and I was in the wrong for saying something. Half hour later, roommate #2 made an entrance by knocking on the door so hard that I thought the door was on its way off the hinges. I really do miss having my own room.

Today, I have done pretty much nothing as I’m based in a tourist trap, then tomorrow I’m off again.

Byron Bay

SarahLeave a comment

To get to Byron Bay was a 13 hour bus ride from Sydney. I go into these things thinking that I’ll get a fair bit of sleep and like every time I’ve travelled overnight, only managed an hours sleep or so.

As I had arrived at 7.30 am, I ditched my backpack in the hostel and went for breakfast at a cafe nearby. I got the impression that I’d rather like the town, but there is only so much you can do there if you’re not a massive fan of beaches. I had a look around the shops and read a book in the hostel.

My second day there I did the Coastal Walk to the famous lighthouse, which to get to you have to be at the most eastern point of mainland Australia. Of course with these things there is someone who had to outdo everyone by climbing over the safety barrier to be more east than everyone else. Twat.

The next day I went on a day trip with some other backpackers to a small hippy town called Nimbin. On the way there we stopped off at a pub to get some bevvys for the journey, and I’m not too sure what impression a bus full of people in their 20s, most with a drink in their hand gave before midday. After Nimbin, we stopped off at a National Park for a BBQ, and then a waterfall that would be more accurately described as a leak.

img_2588

I didn’t do much else during the week; I manged to read four books and had a tasting at a brewery. To be honest, the East Coast hasn’t excited me so far. I have to hang back a bit because I have a trip booked over New Years, so I’m hoping that next month I get back to travelling at the same pace that I did Europe at.

A day in the Blue Mountains

SarahLeave a comment

This morning, I got on the 8.18 train from Central and arrived at the Blue Mountains by 10.45, with a little walk from the station to the mountains. After the lookout points,  I went to have a walk in the mountains. I’d just wanted to spend a couple of hours there, doing a few trails, but managed to get well and truly lost and spent just over four hours attempting to navigate a route out. I’d say that I walked around 17km, a lot of it up hills and stairs; although a nice place to walk, sod getting lost in there again.img_2575 img_2573

20161204_122903img_2573