Darcy dropped me off at the Hertz Rental Office in downtown Brisbane at 9:00 am where I picked up my Toyota Echo. I was a little nervous about my first driving experience being in a big city, but it was pretty easy to get onto the highway from the Hertz office, and then I was off! I got the hang of driving on the other side of the car and on the other side of the road pretty quickly. There were a couple things that I repeatedly did wrong, like turning on the windshield wipers when trying to signal for a turn. A few times, when I went to push in the clutch, I accidentally hit the brake instead with my left foot - that was a little startling. I swear the pedals were closer together on that car than my Cougar. At least thats going to be my excuse.

On the way down I stopped into an outdoor camping gear outlet and bought a tent. Even though I was happy to be done camping when I left Africa, its only been 2 weeks staying in hostels and I'm already tired of the dorms. I think now that I have my own place back in Ann Arbor, my tolerance to sharing with up to 7 other people in a dorm room has drastically decreased. The tent only cost ~$40 USD, so I figured it was a good investment for the rest of my time here.

I stopped for the night in a place about 15 km north of Byron Bay called Brunswick Heads. My first night in my new tent was pretty good, and I got up early the next morning to head the rest of the way down to Byron for my dive!