Sydney

On 10th December we arrived in Sydney, over a week ahead of schedule and with a flight booked from Sydney to Buenos Aiers for 24th November we had just over 2 weeks to see as much of Australia as possible. There´s no way that you can see all of Australia in 2 weeks but we were intent on giving it a good go and had a plan to hire a campervan and drive up the East coast to Cairns.

On arrival, we checked into our hostel, Maze Backpackers on Pitt Street which was pretty central. This was my first hostel experience of this trip and after being spolied with 4 star luxury digs for peanuts in South East Asia it was a bit of a culture chock to say the least. It was teaming with backpackers, most of them just out of school and the twin room we were allocated to was like a prison cell with a shabby bunk bed and just enough room to swing a cat. That said, there was an ok bathroom and two kitchens and it was only for sleeping so it wasn´t all that bad.

After checking in we had a mooch round the surrounding area and it´s fair to say that I was less than impresssed. Expecting to see and bit of cosmopolitan Sydney I was a bit surprised to see shit loads of neanderthals walking the streets and bars. Some of the bars were just pure shite, shitter than the shittest bars in Newcastle and others were totally geared up for travellers such as Scruffy Murphy´s! I really couldn´t be arsed with it so, after checking out Kings Cross, which was even worse, I turned in hoping to see Sydney with a fresh pair of eyes the next day.

Next day, we both slept into the afternoon which was unsurprising considering the journey we´d just had. We got up late afternoon and had a walk down to the harbour to check out the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. First of all, I was pretty surprised at how cold it was expecting it to be the height of summer, but it was like a luke warm evening in Newcastle. The Opera House is cool but unlike all of the photos you see, it´s not white, it´s like an off white cream and pretty unspectaculor in that sense. The Harbour Bridge isn´t too disimilar to The Tyne Bridge and if it wasn´t for the fact that there was loads of tourists and attractions such as ferry rides, you could have easily have been sat on the Quay Side in Newcastle. To sum up, I wasn´t that impressed and was keen to move on, Sydney´s a great place but, as we keep finding out, it´s a city just like any other and unless you´re working, there really isn´t that much to do beyond eat, sleep and drink!

The rest of our days in Sydney were focussed on booking our trip up the East Coast and it turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Our first approach was to try to book a Camper of the internet and we sent off loads of enquiry emails and sat back on our lorrels a bit thinking that we were going to get a Jucy camper. These were luminous green and cost something ridiculous like AU$15 per day. Unfortunately that fell through so we were back to square one... After a visit to Bondi beach, which was pretty dissappointing to be honest, we decided to book our trip through Wicked Travel which was located about 2 doors up from our hostel. The guy the the travel agents was awesome and within a couple of hours we were ready to set off that afternoon.

For about 350 GBP each, we had a camper van, a sky dive at Byron Bay, a 3 day 4x4 trip on Fraser Island and a 2 day sailing trip around Whitsundays. These are the key things to see on the East Coast so we were pretty pleased with getting all of this sorted for such a low price. So, an hour later we were in a taxi ready to pick up our camper and set off. The camper was booked through Traveller´s Auto Barn and they messed up royally and turned out to be the biggest bunch of cock knockers ever. On arrival, the tit on the reception desk was ready to give us the keys to a 10 year on stationwagon which was basically very similar to a Ford Mondeo estate car. Not the best for sleeping in!

Long story short, there was nothing they could do for us whatsoever and basically had a ´tough shit´attitude. We´re no pushovers so we managed to negoatiate some free accomodation and decided that we had no other option other than to take the wagon and get on the road. So, about 4 hours behind schedule we started our journey up the Pacific Highway to Byron Bay with the aim of doing the 900km trip over night without a sleep! That journey turned out to be very fruitful and easily one of the most scariest ever!