More beaches and surfing in Newcastle

Last week I went first time to the Bar beach which joins to the Merewether beach. Two beautiful beaches more to already beautiful beach category of Newcastle. Swell in Bar beach was very good but unfortunately this also means that it gets a little bit crowded. I'm a bit worried to take off to the wave when there is someone in front of me, mostly because I am not very sure if I can always steer my board. This isn't a very good thing since I usually don't manage to paddle fast enough to get many waves during a session and my chances to get a wave get even lighter when there's a crowd taking the same wave.
On the same trip we had a nice conversation with the local police after Matti took a short run against a one way road with his purple Volkswagen Kombi hippy van which is built around 1970s. Didn't get fined.

We also went surfing to the Nobby's beach yesterday and I managed to get my biggest wave so far. It's hard to describe what the surfing feels but for me it's something like when you combine nice powder outback riding to the excitement of park riding with snowboard. Challenging, fun and very good exercise.

I have a test on monday and wednesday which means that no surfing for couple of days. There's a big surfing event going on in Newcastle and the men finals are held on Sunday. Got to see that.

On Wednesday I am taking an early start to my Easter holiday with Matti and the dutch guy Sjord. We're packing 3 surfboards to my van and taking it up north along the coast for two and half weeks. The plan is atleast to stop in Port Mcquarie, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Golden coast(Surfer's Paradise) and maybe continue further north from Brisbane to Sunshine coast and Noosa. Of course we are also going to stop in any good looking beach and have some quality time surfing. Accomodation is mostly in the van but we might also get a roof over our heads when we visit couple of our friends along the way.

More stuff about the road trip coming in future postings, stay tuned...

I got some wheels

Bought a car this week. Toyota hiace 1987 campervan, 2.2l engine with 250k km in odometer. 4 speed manual. Double bed in back with room for 3 persons to sleep. Runs well, so far.

Driving on a left side causes a little confusion in the beginning. It doesn't help that the blinkers are on the right side of the steering wheel and the windshield wipers are on the left side. Couple of times I have accidentally put on the windshield wipers when I was supposed to use the blinker. Roadrules are like in Europe except that you could suppose that in the intersection, when you're driving on a left side, you should give way to the cars who are coming from the left. Wrong, it's like in Europe as well so cars from right can go first. They have weird rules of using the blinker in the roundabout as well, but I'm still doing my research about it.

Human mind is difficult to understand. I remember to dreamt about buying a convertible here in Australia when I was back in Finland. When I got here, I was looking for a suzuki sierra softtop 4wd but luckily didn't buy one, because there's no room for your surfboard and it's not probably good car for travelling. Then I thought about buying a hatchback toyota corolla with a roofracks, which should be economical and you could get your surfboard on the roof. Thought of living in a small corolla made me to look for a station wagon("farmari" in finnish), which are very popular cars among the people who travel in Australia. The disappoinment is that even if you manage to get your 8.6foot surfboard in the car, it's not going to be very comfortable sleeping with it plus nobody else is not gonna fit in. The station wagons here in Australia are usually 3.8l V6s which are not very economical with their 12-15l fuel consumption. That's why I chose a van which has heaps of space and which should also be fairly economical. I hope I can still agree with these 'facts' after trying to travel over 15 000 km around Australia, equal distance than from Sydney to Helsinki.