Surfing in Byron, Cruising in Fraser

Well I skipped the whole Brisbane because I'm not really interested to burn my money in the cities. I had some good surf in the Byron and managed to get my first waves with the 6.3" surfboard.

From Byron I headed North to Noosa heads, but only stayed there for one night since the surf wasn't too special. Got a little bit better with my shortboard though and after a few hours surfing there was a huge tanline on my neck from the wetsuit. Temperature is getting up again and waters warmer so it seems that I can change to boardshorts soon.

I am now at Hervey Bay, which is famous for the whale watching and is a major starting point to Fraser Island safaris. I went through the hostels and managed to get a pretty good stand-by offer for 3-day 4wd safari. It would be a drive yourself, so there wasn't any guide with us. The car was Toyota landcruiser and there was 6 persons in safari. Pretty good setup, since during the safari we saw similar landcruisers with 11 people packed in.



Fraser Island is the most biggest sand island in the world. The eastern beach is called 75mile beach and there's a highway and numerous aircraft landing areas on it. The safari was really good fun. I got to do most of the driving and I really enjoyed accelerating the powerful 4wd through soft landscape. I camped the both nights on the beach under the stars and next to roaming ocean. We stopped to see some really clear sweetwater lakes and also saw many sharks at the ocean. Swimming was strongly discouraged in the ocean and I wasn't stupid enough to try.

Today I'm leaving towards a town called seventeenseventy(1770), which should be the last good surfing point on the East coast before the great barrier reef starts to block the surfable waves. I'm gonna give a ride to two British girls from our safari group and share the petrol costs. After 1770 the next stop is probably the Airlie beach and the Whitsunday islands. Whitehaven beach there, with the bright white sand, is voted for the most beautiful beach in Australia. Can't wait.

On the road again...

Got my payment, said goodbyes to my friends in Newcastle and turned my Toyota towards North. I hit the pacific highway playing Dire Straits and had a strong sensation of freedom since I didn't have any commitments or bigger plans whatsoever. I have time until February, apartment on wheels and two surfboards and I'm in Australia. These facts kept on drumming in my head for a long time until I had departed.

I have pretty much followed the same route we had at the earlier surf trip to East coast. It was weird to stay overnight at the Delicate nobby camping ground because it was almost empty now. The surf was flat so I didn't have a luck to hit the waves. The next day was completely flat as well and I couldn't find any waves even though I went through two beaches in Coffs Harbour, Lennox head and finally Byron bay.

Camping here in Byron bay seems to be really strict so I had to drive a bit further from the city centre to stay overnight in my van. Luckily found a nice spot next to dog exercise beach. Today I had also a little bit luck with the surf. Waves were quite small but I still managed to catch some easy rides with my 8.6" minimal. I'm probably staying here for 1-2 nights more and then heading to Brisbane.

a bit off topic: I have a stats-application running on this website which allows me to see if someone gets into the site by using google and the keywords they're using. Sometimes there's some really weird searches which end up in these pages but yesterday's search went into top three: "male urinals in the Kuala Lumpur".

Returning Australia

I spent two days in Christchurch and enjoyed cold pouring rain before flying back to Sydney. I felt like returning home when I was in customs and the officers told me "welcome back". Now I have working holiday visa for 12 months so I'm able to work while travelling. I went to get my tax file number from local taxation office in Sydney but that was a waste of time since they just told me how to do an online application. After that I had a nice and cheap 5-star kebab and took a train towards Newcastle planning to do some surfing in the afternoon.

I went back to my apartment where I used to live on campus and it was great to see all my university friends again. I couldn't go surfing though since the battery of my van was totally dead and we couldn't jump start it. Later on I got the car running by using thicker jumper cables. I also noticed that there was some damage done to the front passenger side parking light. I spotted tiny traces of blue paint and made some CSI-detective work to find a car with matching paint marks at the same parking lot. Matt lent me his digital camera and I took the necessary evidence photos. Luckily the girl who owns the car didn't deny anything and I'm sure we can work out the proper payment without too much of an hassle. Tomorrow I should get a new cover for the light and then I'm off towards North following the east coast. I snapped my leash of the 8.6" surfboard today so I think it's time for me to start using my other faster but harder 6.3" shortboard.

After too many comments about my hair I got a haircut today. It had been over 8 months since the last one.

Chillin' in Wanaka

I have been a week here in cosy Wanaka. It's much smaller than Queenstown and has a strong ski-village feeling with stunning lake/mountain views. Every morning people get up early and go to two of the nearest ski resorts Cardrona and Treble Cone. The first I already visited and wrote about in my last posting and yesterday I went to the latter. Treble Cone is the biggest ski resort in NZ but most of the skiable area are black back-country runs. It would a perfect place to go after heavy snowfall since there's so much terrain to find good powder. Unfortunately it hasn't been properly snowing here for couple of weeks so the backcountry tracks were already worn out. This combined with the fact that the terrain park isn't too special, I decided to rent skis for the day. It has been couple of years since I went skiing last time but as a kid I used to be the master of alpine skiing back in Finland in the local 102m-high mountain "Kasurila".



It's pretty expensive to go skiing/snowboarding for a day if you don't have a season pass and your own gear. I decided to make my skiing day as cheap as possible and hitchiked the 20km road up to the Treble Cone which turned out to be really easy. When buying the lift pass I was able to get the student discount for NZ & Australian students only, because I still had my Australian student card. On the mountain I met local guy Paul who worked as a lawyer/skiing instructor and ended up skiing with him the whole afternoon. He understood my situation since he had been a ski bum few years ago and gave me a ride back to Wanaka. Later on we went for "few" beers to a bar where his flatmate worked. Friendly bunch of people these Kiwis are.

I'm staying two more nights here before continuing my travels towards Christchurch and eventually on next week to Sydney. I'm missing the surf...