Sunday 30th May 2004 - Day 260/366 - Byron Bay, New South Wales to Surfers Paradise, Queensland.

Another Book. I'm ploughing through them now. This time i read Jeffery Archer - A Matter of Honour as I thought I'd like to see what the old felon was like as an author. I actually quite enjoyed it, although there are a worrying amount of prostitutes and gay encounters in it, that must be the politician in him.

Went out last night with Paul to enjoy the delights of Byron by night. There weren't too many people out, but we ended up watching some pretty good live local bands. What I thought would be a quiet night with an early ending, ended up not being and that kind of ruined my plans of an early morning run before having to catch the bus to Surfers Paradise. Never mind I'll survive.

I've never known such inconsiderate dorm buddies than this lot. When you get in at 3am having had a few sherbets, the normal procedure is to fumble about in the dark rummaging through your bags (normally plastic) looking for whatever it is you need to lie in a coma till morning. Well not this lot. They traipse in and turn on all the lights. I'm up and half dressed before I realised that it was only 3am and I still had another 6 hours before my bus left.

Somehow I've managed to change the combination on my backpack padlock so I've had to pack through the rather small hole at the bottom.

The drive to Surfers takes about 2 hours. Surfers is situated on Queenslands Gold Coast and is easily identifiable from a distance by the multitude of High rise hotels and apartments. Luckily the YHA hostel is about 4kms north in Mariners Cove. It's okay as there are a few lively pubs nearby plus the hostel runs a free courtesy bus back into town. So that's what i did.

Don't get me wrong Surfers is nice, is just got a planned feel about it and is very resorty. They've even put in an artificial reef to improve the surfing conditions. The big theme parks are nearby. There's loads of 'Bad BOYS' in there clapped out motors with phat exhausts on (sorry Big Steve). All the Cruisers hang out on the Esplanade and I note that here even the guys wear those furry moon boots.

You can do a Slingshot or play minigolf here and everything else that you can do in Tenerife. A new one on me was the 'Vomatron' apparently its the ride the astronauts feared and it looks pretty crazy to me.

Watched a snake show which was pretty interesting. He confirmed how many dangerous animals there are in Oz, but really the likely hood of getting bitten is minimal especially if you're sensible. You shouldn't let it ruin your plans to come here.

I couldn't find a shop that sold bolt cutters or a hacksaw so I guess my night will be spent going through the 10000 combinations on my padlock.