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Travelled down to a place called Surfer’s Paradise. I was Mr Navigator so was riding up front guiding Rosey into the town. As we cruised the streets I realised something was wrong. Very wrong. Everywhere I looked there were positively delightfully hot girls. Not just a few, but literally everywhere. I tried to concentrate on the map reading but my eyesight was rapidly failing. To much longer and I feared I would go blind. Thankfully we parked up before any major damage was done. As is the way when we stumble across something as worrying as this, we consulted the Good Book – The Lonely Planet. Sure enough there it is, “Schoolies Week”. When Australia’s school leavers descend on the town for all kind of alcohol fuelled shennagigans. And we’d arrived smack in the middle of it. I was immediately worried at the prospect of swathes of drunken nubile young teens looking for fun and who knows what else. Strangely the guys didn’t seem to share my worries.

Also for about 48 hours My name was Earl. I wanted a bit more face furniture so fashioned a rather fetching moustache. It was amazing. Suddenly I felt I was someone. The photo doesn’t do it justice. It looked better in real life, if that’s possible.

So that evening we went out for a few drinks. Long and short; despite all the schoolies on the streets, because they were only 17 or so, they didn’t make it into any bars. I was gutte-, I mean relieved, as you can imagine. Later I attempted to re-enter a bar I had briefly left but the bouncer wouldn’t let me in, on account of me bearing no similarity to my ID. I should have been annoyed but I accepted he was merely jealous of the awesome tash I was sporting and probably worried about all the fun my moustache and me could have in the bar.

After Surfers we travelled down to Byron Bay. Something seemed oddly familiar about it. Gosh darnit! They only have bloody Schoolies there too. I didn’t know where to look. Unfortunately around this time my camera called it a day, so there are no photos of us out and about in these places. Nuts.

We did a bit more surfing.

Oops, that’s from my private collection.

All washed up.

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Stopped off in a place called Noosa. This is where I had my first drowning, sorry, surfing lesson. This shows the instructor showing Andy and myself how to ‘pop-up’ on the board. I usually save that kind of activity til no ones around.

Almost look like I know what I’m doing. The other 90% of the time I spent swallowing sea water.

After Noosa we travelled down to Brisbane. We happened to be there at the same time as the Ashes. The guys wanted to go down to the Gabba just to check things out. I agreed to go there with them, what with me being a big sports fan type of guy. We walked through Brisbane – a nice place by the way – and strolled across the bridge over the river. Two thirds of the way across I see a girl, of noticeable hotness, walking towards us. As we pass I attempt a casual “I’m just taking a stroll” kind of smile, expecting – at most – a “yes, I am also walking” kind of smile in return. But no. No siree Bob. She laughs. Not just a chuckle but a proper “are you some kind of circus act?” guffaw. I was a little taken aback, but guessed she must have confused me with something hilarious. Lewis and Rosey said it was because I was a retard.

A little further on an Aussie guy passes us. “You guys going to the cricket?” he says.

“Uh, not really, just walking down there.”

“Well, I got these two tickets, you boys can have them.”

Woah. So we ended up watching some cricket.

I had no idea what was going on, but it was cool all the same. You can’t actually see the ball; it looks like they’re just miming cricket.

The English were getting pasted but the atmosphere was good. That evening we went out in Brisbane but it was a bit of a sausage fest (the Aussies shorten it to ‘saus’, pronounced ‘soss’) presumably as the cricket was on. That evening I went on a bonanza when we got back to the camper and made a million peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Lewis and Rosey do not like this combination so Andy and myself ate them all. It was great.

Weet-Bix on the beach?

So we travelled down the East coast from Cairns to Sydney covering some 2800 km (they don’t do miles), stopping off at various places on the way down. We went on a day trip to the WhitSunday Islands, famous for it’s 98% silica sand, whatever the hell that means. We made the most of it by playing some frisbee.

This was the boat.

All very lovely.

We also went to Fraser Island, essentially a huge sand desposit about 90 km long. The roads there are made from sand and the main road is the beach. Awesome (unless you go sun bathing). So we swapped Vic for a Toyota Hilux 3.0L diesel, complete with 4 wheel drive and low ratio yadda yadda. Beast. Check out this bad boy parked up on the sand.

It was bumpy as fook so we decked out the back with pillows.

To get a real idea of how it have a look at this video we called the Bump Ride.

This is the four of us in front of the SS Maheno wreck.

The trio on a huge sand drift. Guess which one of us is standing in a style oozing more mince than bolognese?

I should really get that checked out.