Travel Australia: 5 cheezy monkeys on the road: from Sydney to Brisbane.

Sam, Louis and me went on Sunday from Sydney straight to Palm Beach. There we spent 24h playing “home and away” on the beach waiting for Johnny and Maxime who followed a day later. Unfortunately Louis had been to greedy with his sunscreen and made it difficult for us to see the difference between him and a red lobster. The next week he found it hard getting sleep and found out how it was to be a snake changing skin. On palm beach we tried my aldi-6$ kite and did some bodysurfing.
The next day we continued the road singing every classic Samson en Gert song (my soundsystem is from the 80's) until we arrived in a small National Park in Port Macquirie or Coffs Harbour: I don't remember. Before the dark we had a walk in the park with too many mosquitos and giant insects making an incredible loud lovesong. We swom in a warm lagoon just in front of the ocean to end the day in van playing shithole.

Porth Stephens was our stop to climb a big hill with a windy view. But the highlight there is sandboarding. I was disappointed that it was forbidden to stand up, but afer waxing my board it went well enough to have a lot of laughter.

Sam guided us to a sleeping spot in the forest along the way. We heated up our Barbie and Louis made great sausages and steak. Like everyday we put up our glassed on the roadtrip. But the big spider hanging above the table was a sign for us to leave the table and go to bed...

At Port Macquirie we took a queeste to the best fish and chips , went to the sea-pool and visited a big fort from the world war.

Sam liked to stop a day in Jamba because a friend of him was staying there. There is really not much more then one street to see, but the beaches & great surf make a lot of people fall in love. We had a great camping spot on the top of the hill, view over the water, picnictable, bbq, toilets and showers. Just the sun in the morning burning us out of our van kept the spot from being pretty perfect. We drove to a cliff diving spot, where I took wisely pictures of the gang who jumped from a +-15m rock. Sam hurted his lower back and wrist and Louis who was still changing skin earned himself a painfull ear for another week. (Today he went to the doctor: there's a little hole that might take 6m to recover)

Finally arriving in Byron Bay on time to celebrate Sam ‘s Birthday. I saw it was a surftown which had all to offer: not too big, but all you need including beaches, surf and party.. Altough the evening started quietly in a cheap eating place called Cheeky Monkeys, slowly the place got crowded and everyone stood on the table. Talking to an Italian girl later in the evening, she noticed some guy on stage. When we went closer for a look we saw it was Sam pleasing a girl in many ways to win a free trip to Fraser. He didn’t win the contest, but because of his B-day they gave him the trip anyway! The day after they called Maxime out of his bed to telling him he won the lottery for a big discount on his trip. I didn’t win anything but booked my trip also with happy travels and got great deals as well thanks to Lizzy, who gave us the best roadtrip advise to plan my dreamtour along the east coast. We also had a reunion with Tovi, who would do her east coast just one week ahead of me.

We did a day trip to Nimbin, the hippie-town of Australia. After 3h we had seen the one street full of little souvenirshops and man trying to sell you some cookies. I bought some really old school music cassettes of grease, but my cassete player didn’t work. I could not find out what this place was about, but one kid playing around gave me the opportunity to capture the peace and love revolution of the aquarius. If you think away all the drugs, the true Nimin spirit appears..

A quick jump in the pool in the evening ended up with a big cut in my head thanks to a failed back flip in the undeep water. Everyone acts stupid one time I guess. So a lazy day was really welcome in the arts factory, now that everyone needed recover from sunburns, lower pack pain, wrist pain, earpain, a cut in the head and tiredness of the exhausting travel.

Australia Day was not what we expected. There’s nothing like a parade or show, just people having a day off and getting drunk. So after some chilling at the hostelpool on the tunes of triple J’s top 100 we headed to cheezy monkeys for a free BBQ and took our vans back on the road. We stranded in Palm Beach (another one than earlier in this blog off course) to look for a campspot. Arriving at the parking spot of a criquet arena we met some really crazy people still celebrating Aussie Day with too many beers. Before we know we had a beer in our hand and we were singing the Palm beach song in there changing rooms! “Im a palm beach man, who the fuck are you?!!!” After a well performed streek on the field we left wisely looking for a quieter overnight spot. We woke up at a beachlagoon where a dolphin was swimming around.

Surfers Paradise wouldn’t be the paradise of surfing we know already. So we just hang around there, but soon found ourselves a comfortable seet on the beach watching some great beachvolleyball .

We had booked a day of fun at the wet’n wild waterpark on Tuesday. The attractions were pretty crazy and took us to high speeds in all different waterattrations with names like kamikaze, black hole, mach 5 and tornado. The one to remember is the aqualoop where they give you a backharness to protect your body. If the idea of going overhead doesn’t scare you, wait till you stand in the trap door and the countdown starts. On zero the bottom falls away and you get a free fall of 40ft till you reach a speed of 60kph to the big loop! A thrill to remember..