Alice’s Gap Year Travels

After going a bit wild we arrived in Sydney feeling pretty ill as we checked into Westend Backpackers.. we are currently staying on level 2 in ‘The Church’ – it’s a 32 bed dorm, all of us share 4 toilets and 3 showers, it’s a good laugh and a compleeete mess haha! (our fraser boys stay here now and recommended it!)

We’ve been out the past few nights with some of our Aussie friends which was a good laugh and it has been a long weekend here as it was Anzacs day on Sunday so everyone is in really good spirits. On Sunday we went to watch the parade and i have honsetly never seen so many people in Uniform, sailors, army, police etc,etc. Everyone was wearing thier medals and there were drums and bagpipes as they marched through the main streets. Anzacs day is the only day of the year where you can gamble legally outside of the casinos and so that evening we headed over to the Sugar Mill at Kings Cross where we got involved with a game of Two-Up. It is the traditional game played and all the pubs were packed out, basically theres a guy with a paddle that holds two coins then everyone places thier bets -while we were going for ‘$5 on tails!’ many people were going for $150 plus which was pretty exciting! You guess if it’s going to be 2 tails or two heads when the coins are tossed, guys go around finding people to match each others bets and then whoever wins keeps the money. I came back $5 up and that was good enough for me!

Last night we went to The Sydney Opera House to see a Ballet called The Silver Rose! We really wanted to try and see something there as it’s such a once in a lifetime thing and when the guy on the desk told us that if we’re under 26 and free on a monday then they offer cut-price tickets we couldn’t resist – $47 instead of $101 and worth every cent 🙂 What an experience.

We have exactly one week left in Australia so i’ll let you know how it goes soon, XXX

We spent the next couple of days sleeping in, eating, drinking, going to the shopping mall and hanging out with mates in our hostel. On the Wednesday we did a tour where they take you around the ‘table-lands’ to see and swim in different waterfalls. The tour was called ‘Uncle Brians’ and our guide with Cousin Rohan who drove Gus the Bus, it was such a wicked day and honestly the most random thing I can’t even begin to right down all the banter that was had and wierd stuff that happened. But anyway, the scenery was beautiful and the highlight was visiting the Mila Mila falls which is where Peter Andre filmed his infamous ‘Mysterious Girl’ video and also the setting for ‘Herbal Essences’ and other shampoo brand adverts. We all swam under the waterfall and had pictures flicking our hair about like we were models in a L’oreal advert haha! Again the food was excellent and we ended the day with hot chocolate and muffins before driving home doing crazy dance routines to ‘Gus FM’ – such a random funny day. 

We moved back to Global Palace hostel for our last 2 nights as it was much more central than our other one and had two brilliant nights out, having made the most of our final time in Cairns we got a taxi to the Airport on Friday morning to catch our flight back down to Sydney, putting an end to our east-caost tour – what a mental few months 🙂

XXX 

Have been back in Cairns for a few days now staying at Nomads - Beach House which is good fun. Had a couple of big nights out and have basically been hanging out at the hostel with friends or going ... [Continue reading this entry]

We spent 5 nights in Port Douglas at 'The Parrotfish' hostel, we had brilliant sunshine everyday so theres not really much to write about what we did here apart from this... Pool, eat, sleep, sun, eat, read, sweat, pool, read, sleep, sweat, sun, ... [Continue reading this entry]

With Cairns being right near the tropical rainforests it was inevitably going to rain for at least some of the time. Our hostel was a real party place though so at least we didn't have to go very far for ... [Continue reading this entry]

On our way up to Cairns the Oz Experience gets to stop at a Croc Farm - we pulled up into the carpark - the doors opened and a guy jumps onto the bus with a snake on top of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Mission Beach is a tiny little place and we stayed at Scotty's Beach House which had such a great family vibe about it. We had a 4-bed room with Kev and had our own sofa area to chill on outside ... [Continue reading this entry]

Our last few days in Airlie Beach were pretty chilled although on our last night we managed to lock ourselves out of our room and so ended up sitting in McDo' for a couple hours until we saw the boys ... [Continue reading this entry]

The drive was an absolute killer but Beaver kept us entertained by pitching each side of the bus against each other and making us guess the theme tunes he played on the ipod haha, it was tense stuff and after ... [Continue reading this entry]

Our next stop was to be another special Oz Experience over-night stop like the Surf Camp we did back in Spot X. Our driver for the next couple days was Beaver who was so fun and a proper Aussie country ... [Continue reading this entry]