(My attempt at a somewhat 'arty' shot - Horseshoe Bay Caravan Park)
Anyway to put ourselves out of misery due to lack of work we decided to have a bit of an impromptu engagement party for Jen and Ralph, who'd got engaged at some point between leaving Stanthorpe and getting to Bowen! We all went shopping and bought loads of BBQ food, alcohol, cake and the works! Was an awesome bbq, only worked out to be about $2.50 each and then another guy we knew from Stanthorpe (Dan) came over to celebrate too! We were in the camp kitchen and got booted out of there around 21:30 due to grumpy residents of the caravan park, we weren't even making that much noise but psssht! Relocated ourselves down to the beach where we sat for many many hours until about 3am in the morning, drinking some more and chatting shit, listening to Ralph on the guitar and laughing at Matt and Oly jumping in the sea in the middle of the night - mental! Good times! At about 3am Ralph decided it'd be a good idea for us all to go back and make fish finger sandwiches, which at the time seemed like the best idea in the world to a bunch of drunken backpackers, but in hindsight... well! I went to bed before the fuss kicked off but basically everyone woke a load of people up and people kept complaining because we were too noisey - fair enough at 3am I guess! The next morning when we got up we were basically ejected from the caravan park in disgrace, eep - nothing to do with me, honest, but god it was funny. The woman who came over to see us was shaking on the tent that Matt and Oly were staying in, very violently and telling them to get up and it was just funny as - we didn't wanna stay there any longer anyway! Pssssht!
(Beautiful Horseshoe Bay beach)
Spent that day on the beach, doing not a lot as per usual - damn beach is just so nice! Selim had decided he was going to head on up to a place called Ayr to look for more work so Leighann moved all her stuff into our car, with the plan of travelling on with us, but then Selim changed his mind anyway - mental man! We also ran into some MORE people from Stanthorpe, a couple of canadian guys who we'd also seen in Brisbane. Just can't escape from the Stanthorpe Crew! We ended up staying in some dead end road for the evening - it led down to a beach and there was no sign saying no camping so we just parked up for the night and chilled out, as you do. Was fecking cold though, this beach wasn't enclosed and even though we were slightly off the beach it was SO windy! A bit later in the evening, after everyone had proceeded to get really drunk, a ranger appeared as if from nowhere to tell us all that camping was actually not allowed in this area, and the fine was $200 per person - arghhhh! We got away with it by pleading ignorance, after all there were no signs and he just said to make sure we left no mess and went early in the morning, which to be fair we'd planned to do anyway! The night continued in the same way, drink drink drink! Whoop whoop! I do believe at some point Leighann dropped her phone and killed it too, never a good thing.
(More Horseshoe Bay beach)
The next day we were once again on the lovely Horseshoe beach where Leighann ran into a guy that she'd met in Asia - its mental, such a small world. His name was Trent and he proceeded to feed her lots of alcohol and get her totally trashed, and then invite us all back to his hotel for a party. Apparently it'd been his birthday the week before or something, and he was living at this hotel and knew all the people so got away with it somehow - most places would not appreciate 8 backpackers rocking up and drinking all night by their pool, and sleeping in their car park. But it was a good night, I was absolutely TRASHED and don't recall an awful lot past 9pm to be honest, however what I do recall was good times! Jumped in the pool at some point even though it was freezing, most people had been pushed in over the course of the evening, Leighanns bikini broke at one point. Just a good night all round!! At some point in this evening Selim and Leighann had had an argument and he had disappeared off never to be seen again, so Leighann then officially became the 5th passenger in our already super packed up car! Other events of the evening include Matt and Olys phone being in Nics pocket when she was thrown in the pool, so totally being drowned - not good.
(Attempt at a sunsetty shot on HorseshoeBay beach)
Being dirty smelly backpackers staying in free places, by the next day none of us had had a shower since Horseshoe Bay (although we'd been in the sea + pools, we couldn't have smelt that bad!) so we went to some random playground area to wile away our morning and found a free shower - cold, but free! So we all got clean, and chilled out for the vast majority of the day doing not a lot, no real developments there either! We set off in hunt of another rest area to spend our night in but were unsuccessful, so in the end we just drove back to Airlie Beach in the hope we'd find somewhere to stay there. No rest areas, but we found a dead end residential street where we weren't too close to any houses and spent our evening there. Due to rain and noise constraints we spent our evening in Ralph and Jens campervan, nice and cramped with 7 of us in there! Once again was an evening of goon and drinking games, we played I Never for a while which was just bloody hilarious especially when everyone started getting mixed up, and then Leighann and Ralph started spilling their drinks and then we realised it was definitely bed time. 5 people sleeping in one car was definitely not a viable option so I slept in the front seat of the campervan - not particularly comfy but better than being uber cramped in the car, I guess! The other four slept in the car and the next day they weren't particularly impressed, so I probably came out of it the best, seeing as Ralph and Jen were sleeping in a bed of goon!
(Our dead-end road home for the night aka Kings Beach)
By this point in time, everyone electronics were either dead due to abuse or dead due to lack of power, and we were sick of no showers and no plugs so we headed back into Airlie the next day to look for somewhere to stay, as well as look once more for jobs and potential free accomodation! Not a lot was achieved as we were all vaguely zombified, but we found a place to stay for the night which only ended up costing us about $8.50 each because there were so many of us (and also we lied, and said there was one less of us than there was, haha). Was another good night, we managed to charge up all our stuff, have nice showers, eat half decent food (seriously by this point I really was utterly sick of sandwiches, practically all I'd eaten for about a week) and spent the evening playing drinking games once more with a few people we'd met there - Tom, Kate and Lewis. They taught us a few new games which were bloody hilarious, involving random poses and saying names of fruits without showing your teeth and god knows what else, I don't recall.
(Sunset at Kings Beach)
We woke up on the morning of Tuesday 11th May refreshed from a nice nights sleep and
with all intentions of finding jobs in Airlie Beach or at least free accomodation, but literally just as we rolled into the high street, the car BROKE DOWN. God damn. We were literally driving along and it just cut out. So I headed off to McDonalds to use the free wifi whilst Nic called the RACQ once more to check out the car. They were pretty quick and the guy came to the conclusion thsat one of the parts needed replacing, not good! He reckoned it was gonna cost about $700 - a figure that Nic was not hugely impressed over! However, whilst we were waiting for him, Leighann had made some phone calls and found out for us that work had started in Ayr - a little bit north of Bowen! She rung up a hostel and reserved us all places, and told them we'd be there in a day or two, and hopefully there will be work within a week! Thank feck, I have absolutely no money left - was in the process of advertising my SLR foir sale to fund my travels! Anyway so after that we wandered around for a bit and then got a totally pointless $13 to the garage where all they told us was that they would ring us once they'd had time to look at the car. We began on our 1 hour walk back into the town, about halfway they rung her - arghh! It was the computer that needed replacing, $350 - not quite so bad as $700! We carried on walking into town and went down to the lagoon for a bit - it wasn't really a sunny day but it was humid so we all got in to cool ourselves down and then Jen took Nicola back to the garage once it was done to pay and pick up the car. We then treated ourselves to Dominos pizza as it was cheap Tuesday, $5.90 for a medium pizza which was probably more than I'd eaten in two days, mwah!! So so so so good, probably the last pizza I'll have for a while!
(Cool night time photo of Olly and a hat)
We left Airlie about 5pm to drive up towards Ayr and hope to find a rest stop where we could crash for the evening - Jen and Ralph had managed to get free accomodation by handing out leaflets for a few hours for Magnums and so we didn't wanna head up to the backpackers in Ayr without them. We managed to find one about half an hour away from Ayr and crashed there for the night, another night of mad drinking games and cards, as you do. We've now started putting in elements of other games into other games, so we'll be in the middle of a game or even just talking and suddenly someone would make a really stupid pose and everyone would have to copy them, or everyone would have to get up and run around the bench in a manner not dissimilar to duck duck goose! Good good times, as always.
(The next day at Kings Beach - I LOVE this photo. I could even go as far as to say its my favourite that I took the whole time I was away)
This morning we woke up and got ready very slowly - because of this, Jen and Ralph managed to overtake us on the highway before we'd even left the rest area, even though they'd been 1hr and a half behind us! We all rocked into Ayr around the same time, my phone managed to direct us to the hostel, albeit not very well, and Jen and Ralph got there literally just after we pulled in. We all checked in and then headed off into the town where we've decided that the 5 of us in our car should shop together, at least until we've accumulated some work and some money, because it works out a lot cheaper. So we got $60 of food and that should last us about a week, fingers crossed. This hostel is called Lazy lizard Lodge and its pretty damn awesome - $140 a week. We're in a 4 bed dorm, they're segregated male and female and currently its only us three girls in our dorm. That $140 includes free linen changes every week, as well as free washing machines and use of a giant kitchen. There's also a pool table, air hockey and foosball table all for general use, and a TV and plenty of reading material - its just generally all round good! We've not done a lot since we got here but chill out, but Ralph already had a job for tomorrow - only two hours, but god damn better than nothing!
And so finally I am fully up to date (at time of writing) - when you're bumming around and staying in as many free places as possible its not really that easy to write blog posts, especially when the laptop is dead! However I do believe I'm staying here for the indefinite future, so the address I can currently be reached at is;
Sheri Hart,
20-22 Chippendale Street,
Ayr, Queensland,
4807, Australia.
Feel free to send me post! Any post whatsoever will be immensely appreciated, from anyone! <3
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