Merry Christmas everyone!

Hello and Merry Christmas to everyone. We hope you all had a fab time. Well its been a while since we last updated the blog so we will start with Byron Bay. This was just a small town by the beach. A really nice place but not a lot happening. Here we met up with some friends that were taking the same route as us and took a walk to see the most easterly point in Australia. Its a beautiful lookout right by a lighthouse where dolphins and turtles swim beneath you in the sea. We spent some time here and on the beaches nearby, all in all a nice little stop.

From Byron Bay travelers often go to Nimbin, its known for being one of a kind and still stuck in the 1970s as a pot smoking hippy land!!! We'd never heard of this place before but it sounded like something we had to see so we booked a tour to see it. We'd heard that a lot of backpackers go WWOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) What you do here is work on farms for accommodation and food - you don't earn money but we aren't spending money either. Its a great way to get a real Oz experience, often working with animals and general farm maintenance. So we thought we'd give it a go. Seeing as though we were heading down to Sydney we thought we'd go to a farm just outside of Byron. What we didn't realise when we arranged it is that is was right near Nimbin. We arranged with the tour company to drop us off in Nimbin then we can re-join after our 4 days on the farm.

As we walked through the town we met Tess (the owner of the farm) who didn't look like your average farmer. She was walking around in bare feet and was with her family and friends who were just typical hippy people!!! team RA look a little out of place to say the least.

It was an 80 arce farm but with a twist.......... It was a hippy commune with 5 dwellings. Everything on the farm was built themselves - it looked like a third world country and we were there to give aid! Just for a taste of what the people where like we met a couple called Andre and DeLac who were the same age as us. She had all her bits n bobs hanging out as she wore hardly any clothes, had a shaved head and was wearing a pan on her head, whilst Andre was slaughtering a goat and keeping the skull for his "collection" ha lol.

The work we did included road building (which blistered our hands) planting trees (looking out for snakes as we did this) oil timber and washed the outside of the house which was made out of tin. One thing we did get to do was shower outside!! Literally you took a shower and people were walking past. One time I was in it and two people were having and argument right next to me!!!!! lol. oh and the toilet was a hole in the ground! They did make us feel at home though, they were genuine people who included us in everything they did, we ate all of our meals as a big family, even down to going to watch the nativiety play at the school with everyone (although it did turn out to be about spaceships!!) It was so funny all of the parents were pure hippies and all the food was organic vegetarian. It was quite nice as everyone (including Tess) grows their own veges so everything was nice a fresh.

We slept in Tess's house which she was in the middle of building. Our room was soon to be her daughters new bedroom and didn't yet have windows just plastic sheets. To be fair this was fine in nice weather, the only problem was at 4am when the turkey's and geese and all the other animals started clucking and cock-a-doodle-doing. One night however was a different story.............A massive storm came blowing the plastic off the walls and the rain into our room, we had to get up at 2am in the rain and climb across wooden beams in our PJ's to get the sheeting and try and put it back on!! All while their rockveiler is barking thinking we were burglar's, and we're trying not to stand on any snakes that might be on the ground (she warned us she'd seen the most deadly snakes in Australia on her farm!!). Each of the dwellings was occupied by either family members or randoms that needed a place to stay. One of these randoms was called Wolf, he'd lived in a Tepee in the forest for a few years and needed a change so he turned up on Tess's doorstep and they set about making a house. For someone who has lived off the land and managed in a Teepee he had an awesome set of DJ decks, digital and everything!! He was a funny guy, always stoned and telling us how much energy we brought to the place, one night he even taught us how to DJ.

Anyway in turned out to be an experience we will never forget and one we glad we did. We rejoined the tour on our last day and everyone thought what we'd just done was hilarious, it was so nice to be back with people that actually washed!

The week after couldn't have been more different. We went on a 5 day surf camp that took us from Byron bay to Sydney. There was loads of us, we took a bus down to Spot X where we stayed for 2 nights and 2 days and this is where we had our first surfing lesson. Everyone in the camp were surfers so it was quite chilled out and they cooked gorgeous food. We were knackered after surfing, it really took it out of us but we managed to stand up and learnt how to read the ocean and tell if it is safe or not.

On a night we would all get together, play drinking games and chill out by the bonfire, a really good way to met some new people. We left Spot X after 2 days and headed to Crescent head. The waves here were a bit bigger and good for putting out new found talent to the test. We had around 2 surf lessons a day which at 2 hours long was enough! We were taught by a 8x world champion surfer, We stayed here for another 2 days before making the final journey to Sydney.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Unfortunately due our camera being nicked we couldn't do one last time. however here's another one

All our love

Team RA

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Brisbane - Surfers Paradise

Hello Again!!!

Well for starters we have some bad news (although we can see the funny side of it now) There won't be many pictures on this blog because at Surfers Paradise beach our bag got stolen, so guess what.................we're on camera number 4 now!!! Luckily the lifeguard told us to go and look for our bag as the thieves usually dump them after they've taken what they want, so we went searching and like a sniffer dog I found it in the bush. They'd left our credit cards etc just taken some money, my watch that Rich bought me for my 18th and our camera. We'd already burnt some pictures to disc so we've only lost Brisbane and some of Surfers, still, we'd like to hunt the little beggars down!!!

Anyway we'll start in Brisbane.....

Our first big city for while and a refreshing change from little towns. Some of our friends from Fraser Island, Whitsundays boat trip and people we've met along the way were there so on our first night we went out to sample a Saturday night in Brisbane. We had a few drinks and good laugh, all in all a good night.

The next day we set off walking through the city to see the sights. They have gorgeous botanic gardens right in the middle of the city so we had a stroll around those and checked out the river and Kangaroo Point. That night we just wandered around getting our bearings around our hostel and had an early night. On Sunday we hired a tandem bike and went all over the city. We followed a route down the river towards south Brisbane, through Toowong and the Queensland university and took a shortcut on the way back. This 'shortcut' took us across some major roads, dual carriageways and bridges before we ended up back on a cycle track.....whoops!!

We met up with our friends again that night and went to see 'Australia', a great film about Australia (obviously) in WW2. On Monday we went to the Lagoon (Streets Beach) in Southbank which is a man made beach along the river with a swimming pool. Its a great place, Southbank, with lots of little cafes and ice cream shops all within a walkway covered in purple flowers.

On our last day we went to Mt Coo-tha, a gorgeous lookout point over all of Brisbane. There we also did a walk though some bushland and to some waterfalls, well actually they were dry so we climbed up them! That night we met up with an old friend from school (Ben Brooks) who lives in Brisbane now and we had some tea at a Chinese in Southbank, a lovely end to our stay in Brisbane.

Our next stop was Surfers Paradise. We didn't expect such a lively place!! It was a real holiday town where all the Ozzie's go for a summer break, great beaches, nightlife and awesome theme parks just outside, the place was really buzzing!!

On our first afternoon it poured down so in true Brit style we went for a few beers, in fact all afternoon we did a pub crawl around the town and even got shouted some drinks by a bar manager (everyone loves team RA!). That evening at our hostel they put a film on the outside screen and we all sat around the pool with 'all you can eat' Domino's for $5, a box of wine and watched the film. We met up with some friends who had made their way to Surfers and ended up hitting the town again!! A cracking day and an even better night!!

The next day we headed straight to the water park. We have never seen anything like this place, it was huge, it took us the whole day to get around, awesome slides with almost vertical drops, loads of tube rides and even a tornado one where we both sat in a tube and it whizzed you round, such a good day out!!! The hostel we stayed at also had a converted van where you can hire films and go and watch them in the van so after a big night the night before we decided to rent out 'A night at the museum' (with Ricky Gervais) and had a quiet night in.

On our last day we headed to the beach, the sun was shining and it was a great day to jump into the waves, we were having a great time until we realised our bag had gone!! So the rest of the day was at the police station sorting it out and ringing the insurance company.

Next stop is Byron Bay and working on a cattle farm for a few days (should be interesting!!)

All our love

Team RA

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