Nov 2006

original 5

accommodations

brock what a changing man or whatever he is (ok hes just getting a harmless makeover with some lip gloss)

just bought a new camera so ill start getting some new photos. enjoy!!

it is weird to think that after this year on the road i will have to acutally go back to the real world. not that it has been hard nor am i complaining but it has takin a bit of gettin used to. waking up every day and not havin any set plan or the fact that every day is no different than the other in terms of importance such as weekends and such is much different than the life i have lead up until this trip and alot different than a majority of my peers especially the ones at uni.(european for university) it really hit home yesterday when i was for the first time in the past 3 months and 1 week woken up by an alarm and even more disturbing was the fact that the alarm was to wake me for work. though the work i did yesterday was great fun but i deffinetly realized it is not why i came on this trip. i was employed for $15/hour to help do maintnance on Sir Alexander which is not helping care for some 74 year old senile man but a beautiful 74' sail boat that is used to do over night trips out on the great barrier reef. doing painting,sanding and scrubbing was the easy part but being in a marina with no wind on a 95 degree day is one thing i could easily pass up in the future. it was good to learn a bit about boats and to get mixed in with some of the local flavor of the workers which most of the travellers coming through airlie beach dont get while downing a pint in the backpacker bars. i had to deal with everyone from crsuty old sailors to proper bussiness men whom were the owners of the company. of course i had to get paid in cash because of the lack of a wokers visa which i am not complaining about. i am taking care of the camera dillema tommorow so the blogs wont be as boring anymore and people will have a reason for checking this site out. though some of that might have sounded a bit like complaining on my part i am no way in hell resenting the oppurtunities this trip has and will continue to give me. i love life on the road and i would deffienetly suggest doing what alot fo people i have met on the road have done and just bite the bullet and take off, do what you have always wanted to do without the restrictions of life at home. but be careful once you have bitten the bullet you are sure to be bitten yourself by the travel bug that seems to have gotten me and has seemed to bring so many people around the world together with one common bond.

the crew and i have made it to arlie beach today. arlie is the gateway for most divers and fisherman going on trip to the great barrier reef. we plan on staying here for a couple of weeks and getting jobs. options are either boat work or bar work. either or should be fun. sorry for the absence of pictures my camrea has thrown in the towel. dont know if it was exessive heat or sand but i would guess the latter. so i am now starting a buy nick a new camera fund set up at my folks house. haha just kidding. we plan on selling the car here in airlie and the money i get from here i will buy a nice camera. we all had a great "holiday" within a holiday in hervey bay. tom's mum has a friend there whom within 5 hours notice put us all up for two nights and treated us with such great hospitality. julie and daryll own the fuel depot at the airport and are extensive travellers whom were glad to put up with our wild bunch after their three sons have moved out of the house. two of the sons in there early 20's have a proper bachelor pad across town where we spent alot of time and brock won $60 in pocker. the last ngiht we were fed a proper"roast" as the english were saying. another great story to add to the car diaries happened last ngith when we ran oput of gas trying to get to airlie. i know it sounds dumb that we ran out of gas but you have to realize that the amount of space between towns in this huge country is emmense. we ended up being able to roll into the town of st. lawrence population:179. it was 7 at ngiht and of course the only petrol station in town was closed. after no luck of getting the station owner whom was in the pub with the rest of the town to open up we quckly posted up for a proper country feed as they would say and had a great time. well, time for some job hunting .. cheers!

so we are back in noosa after a detour down south to go to south straddie island. we intended on a two day trip but the weather and surf was crap so we headed back to the mainland. mono has left us for down south sop we are back to 4 of the original guys and we have added one girl to the travel squad which is kind of weird haha. my camera is broken at the moment so once i get it fixed i will post some pics. we are heading today to hervey bay to see one of toms friends and them up to the town of 1770 which is the last place to surf on the coast. i am going to try to get a job on an overnight boat that goes to the great barrier reef. just being a deck hand for a couple of weeks. my travel plans at the moment are to have x mas and new years here in oz. then head back to indonesia and the be in new zealand in feb. oh and side note : i washed my hair today for the first time on this whole trip i know my mom is proud.