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.