April 30th - May 5th

So on Friday 30th April we decided not to stay in Noosa for very long and head onwards and northwards in our epic search for work. We rung Harvest Line who basically said to head to Bowen so we started up north and figured we'd go through a couple of working towns on the way to see if we could find anything. We stopped in a little town called Gympie for lunch and then headed on to Bundaberg and Childers for work searching. Everywhere we went we were told we had a week to wait before any work started so in the end we decided to carry on to Bowen as thats where all of the Stanthorpe gang were headed. We searched for a free rest stop to crash for the evening and ended up at a place called Lake Munduran - when we turned down the road we thought it was a free place but turned out it was a paying campsite, but we rocked up in the dark and headed off really early in the morning to avoid spending any more moolah than necessary!

Headed to a little place called Rockhampton for breakfast, another delightfully unhealthy fast food meal! We decided to go to a National Park to kill a bit of time again without spending any money, but the one we ended up at was pretty shite! Byfield National Park, we went for a bit of a walk which was nice to just get out of the car and stretch legs a bit but there wasn't a huge amount to see and the flys were INSANELY irritating, still haven't got quite accustomed to them. Argh! Headed on up again after the National Park, we were planning on getting to Mackay but ended up finding a free rest stop about halfway between Rockhampton and Mackay on the Bruce Highway. Was a pretty decent rest stop as they go! Because it was bank holiday weekend (again!) there was loads of people there minding the rest stop, and they'd cooked a roast dinner and ended up donating the leftovers to us - we weren't gonna complain, we'd been living on sandwiches for about three days at that point!

Sunday morning we woke up and continued driving, heading upwards and onwards some more - we were umming and ahhing about whether to stop off at another National Park but ended up driving straight up to Airlie Beach which we'd heard good things about, and it definitely lived up to its reputation! I love that place with a passion. Theres barely anything to it, to be honest - a main highstreet, a few beaches (where you can't swim anyway because of stingers) and a man made lagoon, but the weather is normally lush and the lagoon is lush and its generally all round a pretty awesome place. Liked it lots!

For the first night we were there we stayed at Bush Village Backpackers, a relatively expensive little place where we had our own little cabin between the four of us - $29 each a night. We had our own kitchen and en suite bathroom though, it was worth it as it was a pretty awesome night. Two of the german guys who'd been at Stanthorpe came up to spend the evening with us and it turned into a night of extreme drunkeness and many card drinking games, nothing new there - seems to be all we ever do these days! I took extreme amounts of drunken pictures, they are hella amusing though they've yet to make their way onto facebook about a week and a half later, the perks of having no money - bah! We also got our free breakfast the next morning, very welcome - none of us were badly hungover as such but free food is always good either way!

Most of the rest of my time in Airlie is a bit of a blur, all we really did was sunbathe and swim at the lagoon and spend our evenings playing drinking games and cards. We spent the next three nights at Magnum Backpackers which is right in the middle of the high street, camping but it was a lot cheaper so we didn't mind - $11 each per night! Was an awesome few days, we met so many people from Stanthorpe who'd also ended up in Airlie Beach - at one point there was 15 of us from Blue Topaz all staying in Magnums, good good times! I think on our second or third day at Airlie my little camera got broken, was most unimpressed - damn thing! At some pioint when I actually have money I need to send it home to England to get it fixed, its still under guarantee and seeing as I never actually did anything to it, I want it fixed GOD DAMN!




(An epic collage of our time in Airlie Beach, mainly consisting of photos from our drunken night staying at Bush Village backpackers!

From top left clockwise:

Olly + Matt + Hagen in the hammock
Me making a stupid pose and Hagen + Fabian watching
Nicola doing.. something. Fabian in background.
Fabian + Olly trying to wake up Matt by putting speakers to his ears.
Olly + Matt + Fabian getting a bit stoned.
Fabians back blocking the view of the LAGOON. Epic place.