It wasn't a good start. Far from the almost immaculate manners, and helpfulness of the Kiwis (bus drivers and Graham excluded), the grumpy cow at customs couldn't even be bothered to turn my customs declaration card over. 'Other side' she barked at me. It's double-sided, silly me. I should have known that you were more interested in the plantlife I wasn't bringing in, than the food I was. Hmph.
Anyway, we got ourselves a free shuttle to our hostel. The guy decided it would be funny to wind us up and tell us we needed a ticket (it is a good job we had our corsets on that morning, else I fear our sides may have split.) If you are in transport, and spot people with bags under their eyes a similar size to their 80 litre backpacks, it is not a good idea to try witty little wind ups!
After listening to a long discussion on Lebanese politics, between a French guy and the driver, we arrived at the hostel. This hostel was the most expensive place we've stayed so far, including the 5* hotel, so we expected it to be fairly decent. We'd booked 2 nights, and another at the end of our trip so I could hopefully pick up the new sim card that missed me by a day in both Hong Kong and Auckland.
The hostel was huge, and the bathrooms downstairs and outside. The dorm was a tip, as as we later discovered, most of our room mates had been there for months. We both got our favourite beds - top bunks - mine was particularly fun as it had no sides. Logic says given that I have fallen out of bed about 3 times in 25 years, most of which where when I was under ten, the chances are a sideless bunk bed will be ok. However, it does make getting up and down a little difficult when there's nothing to hold on to.
It wasn't long before we were hacked off with Australia. It's ludicrously expensive - EVERYTHING is expensive. A cheap meal costs about £7, internet is about £2 an hour - more in some places, and in our experience people have been pretty damned rude. For example, the first morning I woke up early and went around the corner to pay an extortionate amount of money for a version of scrambled eggs on toast, on account that the place had free internet. It had powerpoints too at the tables, as most internet cafes do, and I sat for a while with my breakfast answering my emails. Later, Loz went back with me, also for some scrambled eggs, and we did some planning. All was well. The following day, the internet in the hostel which we'd (over)paid for, wasn't working. So in the evening we thought we'd head out for coffee to the same place. We walked round the corner in the rain to the cafe, and sat down, as the day before, and plugged ourselves in, waiting for the waiter to take our order. We were greeted by a guy who said 'If your looking for the internet, it's not on at this time of night, as we're in the middle of dinner, and it's not very nice.' Great. 'Ok, thanks' we said, debating whether to have a coffee anyway, while we decided how we were going to book the stuff we needed to book with no internet access. While we were thinking, said gentleman (debatable), came back and said, 'Oh, and for future reference, if you want to use our power, you can come and ask us first.'
I was actually speechless. Usually when I'm in normal mode, as opposed to holiday mode, my tongue lashes a little quicker, however, disappointedly all I could muster in my shock was a dejected 'ok sorry.' I felt like a small child, who'd just been told they had terrible manners and been sent to bed early in shame. Needless to say we wouldn't be needing his future references.
The thing that I'd most been looking forward to about Australia was the freedom of hiring a car and driving up the coast, stopping wherever we pleased, enjoying the beaches, and gradually making our way up to the Great Barrier Reef for some snorkelling. Unfortunately after blowing the budget in New Zealand (and of course the fact that it was ludicrously priced anyway), car hire was out of the question. Aus was costing us twice as much per day to live as anywhere else we'd been.
One of the girls in NZ had tipped us off about camper van relocations. We were mega excited by this, having found three that we could relocate for a hire fee of $1 per day. Some of them even had a petrol allowance, meaning we would hardly have any fuel costs. It was perfect. Our driving dream may work out after all... Nah! The first time I called, the woman told me to phone back in an hour (and hung up... nice). Apparently they were waiting on an updated list, which would arrive in an hour. We checked the site, and the updated list still showed the ones we'd wanted. Phew. The second time I called, all of our vans were taken! Gutted! Now what?! We had almost three weeks in Sydney to spend being ripped off by rude people in a hostel with cockroaches. Fabulous. The whole reason we'd extended our time there was to account for driving time which we no longer needed. Eventually we discovered a backtracker train pass, allowing us unlimited train travel between Melbourne and Brisbane for 2 weeks. This combined with a return flight to Cairns, became our new solution. The new solution cost us a whole week's budget on its own, but we were out of options, and it was still the cheapest.
Busses are more popular than trains in Australia, which only has about six trainlines in the whole country. The trains are comfortable, with plenty of legroom, and the food on them is generally cheaper than other places - interesting! They do only move at 4mph though.
We spent 3 days sleeping and planning in Sydney, managing to visit Bondi beach (which is actually really nice), and to walk round the harbour, seeing the bridge, the opera house and the botanical gardens - again, lovely. On day four, we packed up and started our trek up the coast. First stop, Coffs Harbour - 9 hours on the train from Sydney. I'm fairly sure the guy who built this railway was drunk, as he clearly had no concept of straight lines, and after a couple of hours I was turning quite green. My only option... take some pills and sleep, which would have been easier without the screaming toddler. That's what earplugs are for... right?
The guys at the Coffs Hostel were great. Really friendly, really helpful. They even sent a hottie to pick us up from the station for free and show us round - lovely. We had a nice BBQ, which wasn't too expensive, and met some nice people over dinner. We watched the Simpsons movie - you know, normal stuff - the stuff we'd been missing for a good few days! The people in Coffs were a bit more chilled. The hoste was friendly and sociable, and not in the sense that it was blaring dance music at all hours of the night, and plying drunk chavs with beer until they were sick. I liked it. Sydney was very 'Brits abroad'. This was not so. (Loz and I have concluded we are abnormal, not wishing to be permanently slashed and vomming in our day sacks.) We hadm, it seemed, brought the rain with us though, and the first part of the next day we spent indoors, not really fancying the beach. Luckily though it did dry up, and we went for a walk, and then a swim in the sea. (Or I did, Loz was more sensible and stayed dry.) It was lovely apart from being damp and Sandy for our 4 1/2 hour journey up to Byron bay that evening. [For incidents on the train see 'You know you're a bad person when']
We changed coach and arrived into Byron Bay at around 8.30pm. We'd struggled to find a hostel in Byron - everything was either booked or too expensive, but the Coffs Harbour guys booked us at one which they were associated with. We were wrong to expect them to be at all similar. We trotted up to the blaring 'mmmcha, mmmmcha, mmmmcha' of Cascada's latest dance track outside our room, with no glass in the windows, only mesh. We were shattered. I had no clean clothes, and felt filthy, but decided I still couldn't be bothered to shower. The showers were outside, past the drunk people, and I wasn't in the mood. We fell pretty much straight to sleep.
I woke the next morning to a bed full of sand, managed a slightly grim shower and then checked out. We left our bags, booked a hostel in Brisbane for two nights and then headed out to the beach. They had not lied. Byron was beautiful. We walked the length of the beach, which was covered in little crabs, and paddled our way to the start of the lighthouse track we were going to walk. Having already walked for about an hour, we figured it couldn't be much further up to the lighthouse. We climbed the first steep hill, its peak rounded a corner where we discovered that it was still a very long way in the distance. Despite the rain having followed us again in the morning, it had now dried up, and was roasting and very humid. Decided we weren't up for it, or up to it (or both), we sat for a bit, and admired the view. We also saw quite a big lizard and several turkeys who took a shine to our biscuits. We paddled our way back along the beach - it really was nice - clear water, white sand. I'd have swam if I hadn't learned from yesterday.
At about 8.30pm the coach picked us up to drop us in Brisbane. We'd booked the hostel in Brisbane because it looked great, quieter than the others, but its main attraction was the free internet. Finally! Somewhere forward thinking enough to provide free wifi! When we arrived the hostel was in full party mode. They had their own pub, which I waded through to find someone to check us in. We headed up to our room, where we were greeted by a moth. (Loz does not like moths at all.) I had bloodstains on my pillow and bottom sheet, and chewing gum all over my bedposts. There was no ladder to get onto the bed, and my bed wasn't properly attached to the bottom bunk below (of course we had top bunks again) so each time I attempted to get on it, it moved. I ended up having to move the washing that was all over the end of my bed so I could climb up (gracefully of course). We were not amused, and again went straight to bed.
I didn't sleep well at all, as the girls came in plastered, with the lights on in the early hours making no attempt to whisper... then they got up again at like 7am! Argh! Long story short, we managed to do some washing and post some stuff, but their free wifi didn't work, and the hostel was grim. You see when you put a bar in a hostel, which doesn't have its own toilets, you have to expect that your hostel toilets will look like those of The Pier (a cheap Cleethorpes club, for those who haven't been) on a Friday night. The posters on the wall of the common room read things like 'Thank F**k it's Friday - that's right guys we meen naked chicks' (their spelling mistake, not mine), and all of the female hostel staff (all girls except one guy... the duty manager or 'pimp', we'll call him), had to wear tops with 'weapons of mass distraction' written across the chest. If hooters owned a hostel, this would be it. In the words of Dolly Parton 'It costs a lot of money to look this cheap'. It did, and it was.
So, we are almost up to date. We're now on a Virgin Blue flight from Brisbane to Cairns. The aircon is broken and it's £7 dollars if you want to watch TV. Fortunately, we're almost landed. It's strange for a country who insists on you producing photo ID to buy a sim card, and to post anything due to terrorism risk, that their domestic aiport security is crap. We didn't have to produce any ID or a reservation number or anything to get on the flight. I just told them my name, they believed me, and assumed the other girl was Loz. Fair enough.
We've flown to Cairns to snorkel on the Reef tomorrow. We've booked into a comparatively cheap, but nice-looking hostel, in a twin room for 3 nights. Come on Australia. You have a chance to redeem yourself. We want to like you, but you are making it very difficult.
I don't think there's anything I can add to this!
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