Hi Everyone!

I think I last wrote about leaving Bundaberg and going to Airlie Beach. I am in Airlie Beach now but I am leaving for Cairns tonight. I spent 2 nights here before going sailing for 3 days then 2 more nights after sailing. I had a great time sailing! It was a relaxing trip which was good. The night I came back I went out drinking with some of the people on the boat with me then I met up with some other people who I know from before. We ended up going to a couple of different places. We ended up getting very very drunk and having a great time. The last club we went to had a wet t-shirt contest and a girl from Canada won. I was far too drunk to even consider talking to her or anyone that I hadn't already met that night. haha...it's always fun after a night like that to go around and see who looks at you funny because they think they might know you but aren't sure why. haha. I gave a few people those looks...but by now i just pass them off as fellow partiers. Last night was much more calm. I had to check out at 10:00am this morning and if I went out like the previous night i'd still be asleep now. Tomorrow morning I will arrive in Cairns at about 6:30am and then I have to look for a hostel to stay at. Once that if figured out I am going to look at scuba packages. I will be there for about a week so I will try to get some diving in. A friend said to try to go to Port Douglas. We will have to see what happens. I have to get going. Everyone take care and I will see most of you in a few weeks.

Hey everyone! Today I leave Bundaberg forever. Thank God! I am finished work and I don't have to get up at 3:45am anymore. Tomorrow I will be in Airlie Beach and a few days after that I will be sailing. Last night was a big party night and we played a game called a B.O.A.T race (Beer On A Table). We went in as countries, 4 people per team and the object of the game was to chug a beer as fast as we could. Canada managed to beat everyone in the game (Irish, French, Dutch, German, and English). It was a lot of fun. When we won some of the local Australians wanted to play us but not with beer, with rum and coke. I wasn't sure how that was going to go down but we played them and won again....I guess we are the best drinkers in....well Bundaberg. It was fun anyway. This will be a short entry today. I have to pack up and get going. I will write more after I arrive in Airlie Beach.

Take care

Hey everyone! Haven't written in here for a while because I have been busy working (picking capsicums - bell peppers). I have been going to work at 5:30am and working until 3:00pm. This is a nice easy 9-1/2 hour day....except I am hunched over these foot tall plants all day. I've tried this sort of lunge thing to spare my back...I've tried to kneel but that is too slow so we just stay hunched over shuffling along the rows. My back is killing me but the heat is probably harder for me to take than the pain. It is above 30 everyday with no shad and very little wind...this is great for the beach but not to be stuck out in a farmer's field picking fruit. Oh well I just keep thinking about the money i am making. We celebrated Halloween last night at the hostel. Nearly everyone has the day off today so we all got good and drunk. I couldn't figure out what to go as so I was boring without a costume. There were 2 other Canadians who went as lumberjacks their costumes where great I will find a picture and put it in my next blog. They got there and everyone was cheering then they asked for silence so they could sing the Lumberjack Song from Monty Python. Oh I only have 10 minutes left...Um there isn't much else to write anyway. I have just been working all lots lately. Today I am doing some laundry and hanging out by the pool. I will write again when I have a day off...I don't know when that will be so be patient. Bye

Hi everyone! I found some work that pays hourly but because of the rain I am still not working enough to make any money. I am not even breaking even on the hostel...I am looking for work again. haha. I was getting pretty low on funds for a little while. It wasn't because I was spending all of my money on partying (like in Scotland) it was because when I was in Byron Bay an ATM took my Australian bank card. I had to use my Canadian one for 2 weeks which wasn't bad except my bank in Canada was still taking out payments for my Toyota after I thought I put a stop payment on it. I guess they were missing some information but it is ok now. I have my new bank card and there is enough money in my Canadian account to pay the rest of my bills while I am here. This town is pretty boring when you aren't working. If it was November I could go to the coast and see those big ass turtles go up the beach to lay their eggs, like you see on the Discovery Channel but that is about it. Yesterday I was suposed to go bowling with some Canadian girls I met here but we ended up just walking around. Today we are heading to the Rum Distillery (Bundaberg Rum) if the girls can wake up and stomach the smell of alcohol....they were pretty messed up...I was doing ok myself...but I still get up at 7:00am and I am still a little drunk. I can't sleep-in here...i don't know what is wrong with me haha. That is about it today....sorry I don't have anything more exciting to tell you. Some people want to go out on Friday and get drunk....I am sure something stupid will happen (hope it's not me doing it...). Take care.

Hey everyone. I am in Bundaberg now. I am fruit picking here. I've only been here for a couple of days now and I was out picking cherrie tomatos yesterday. We were picked up at 4:15 am yesterday morning and were taken to a farm where we stared work around 5:30. We worked until 1:30pm. I got a pretty good sunburn on my arm, despite using sunscreen. Oh well. I have today off and I am using it to find better work. The tomato pickers pay on a contract basis. $12.60/5 gallon pail of tomatos. Some people can pick a pail in 1/2 hour...I wasn't that fast. I am looking for something that pays on an hourly basis. I might end up heading south again. I don't know yet I am making some phone calls to see what there is for work around here first. I won't be getting my bank card until Monday or Tuesday next week. The surf trip was great! It was more like a road trip than a surf camp. There was Joe (Surf camp instructor), Mark (Joes friend), Chris (backpacker), and myself. It was pretty cool. We just drove around in a van full of surf boards and our bags looking for good places to surf. We had one day where the waves were 3 and 4 feet. That doesn't sound big but when it hits you and drags you all the way back to the beach you quickly realize how much power is behind this stuff. haha. The last day and a half the surf wasn't great...the further north we got the worse it was. We needed to go north though...so we could get here to work. The first night one of Mark's friends named Cockatoo Paul came to visit us at the camp we were at and he showed us all kinds of different plants that you can eat or use for all kinds of stuff. It was pretty neat...oh he's called that because he has a Cockatoo on his shoulder all the time...it's his pet. Did you know they live for up to 100 years? We didn't stay up very late that night because we were getting up at 5:30 to go surfing the next morning. The second night was a little different. We stayed in Maroochyadore in a hostel called the Cotton Tree. This was a really cool house turned into a hostel. The best thing about this place was that it had a hot tub in the back yard....nothing better than a hot tub after surfing all day. We decided to have a few drinks that night and ended up being pretty hungover for surfing the next morning. It is amazing how getting in the water can make you forget how shitty you feel. haha. We couldn't surf in the afternoon because there was no swell. I stayed in Noosa (where I was dropped off) for 2 nights and then moved on to Bundaberg where I am staying in a hostel called the Cellblock. It is a pretty cool place. It is an old police station. I have to get going and start the job hunt. Talk to you later.

Guess how many boobs I saw today....fifteen! haha. Hi everyone! Everything is going well I am in Byron Bay right now but I am leaving tomorrow for somewhere...but I am not sure where. The surf trip I am going on this time is based on where the best swells are so I won't know where I am surfing until I get there. I have been in Byron Bay for 2 days now and it has been up to 30-34 degrees C. For my American friends that is about 88 - 90 F. I had the great experience of having an ATM take my card yesterday so I am without an Australian bank account until next week some time. It is a good thing I have some money left in my account in Canada or I'd be in a little bit of trouble. I must have put the wrong number in...which can happen when one is watching a nice looking girl go by haha. Well I don't have a lot to say. I am going surfing tomorrow!! I can't wait. I will add more when I get back from that trip. I am going out tonight to have some fun at a bar called Cheeky Monkies here in Byron, should be fun.

Take care all.

Mike

Hello everyone, this is my very first entry! I have been here in Australia for about 2 weeks now. I have been having a great time. I spent my first couple of days checking out what there is to see in Sydney. Naturally I went to the Sydney Opera House. It's a pretty cool building. I took this small bus tour called the Bondi Explorer which took me all over Sydney to a bunch of different sights. It was a hop on hop off thing so that was pretty cool. We ended up at Bondi Beach...it was windy and cool so the beach was pretty empty. I was thinking about taking some surf lesson there but I heard that it's a little humiliating because the locals aren't against laughing at you when you fall. I can't blame them it looks pretty funny sometimes.

Anyways. I had some time to kill so I spent 3 days out in the Blue Mountains in a town called Katoomba hiking and hiking more. The first day I was there we did a 3 hour hike into the Grand Canyon (Australia has one too) where we went from a eucalyptus forest to rain forest. It was pretty interesting but even better we got to go see some kangaroos afterwards. Once I arrived back in Sydney I decided to do a surf camp south of Sydney at 7 Mile Beach. For anyone who cares 7 Mile Beach is near a town called Gerroa. When we were there we stayed in small cabins which was a lot of fun. I would put more pictures on here but I am not sure how this is going to turn out. haha. The first night we were all so tired from trying to paddle out and stand up that we didn't party at all... Most of us didn't I went to the local pub with a few people and had a couple of pints but it was a pretty quiet night. The second night was a different story. We all partied that night. Most people played a game called 'Ring of Fire' which is a lot like Sociables at home. I stayed out because I wasn't drinking beer like the rest of them. I was drinking Bundaburg Rum O.P. this is like regular Bundy Rum except it is about 60% alcohol. That is what you get for sending someone else to pick up booze for you haha. That was a fun game to watch. Once that one was done they started on the Jenga which is very popular as a drinking game everywhere I go. I stayed out again because it wasn't regular jenga...Some blocks were black and others had rules on them. Some of these rules weren't too bad like finish your drink and so on. Some blocks had things like no underwear remove and prove that you aren't wearing underwear. The most interesting rule was the nudey run rule where if someone pulled that block they would have to do...Well a nudey run around the camp. We had 3 nudey runs that night. It was pretty funny. It was a pretty fun night and thankfully we didn't have to surf until 11:30am the next morning. I couldn't sleep the next morning and I was up at 6:00am (not hungover or anything). I was bored so I went walking down to the beach and on the way a lady stopped me and told me that she had seen some whales north of where I was and they were heading south. I ran to the beach and managed to see them for a little bit but I didn't have my camera...too bad. We also saw some dolphins on our third day of surfing which was really cool. The last day we weren't able to surf because it was really really windy and boards would have been flying everywhere like missiles. We instead went to a place called Jervis Bay. I guess it has some of the whitest sand on Earth. We all goofed around there for a while then went back to Sydney and partied at a place called the Scubar. It was a great time, if anyone thinks of going to Australia and wants to learn to surf there is no better way. Anyways, I think I am done with this blog for today. I will add another entry in a week or so. I hope you all have enjoyed my endless babbling today.