Surfs up duuuuuuude

So Court left me to my lonesome in the great big city of Brisbane with a week and a half to kill before I take off to Perth, what to do what to do, heeyyyyy Id yet to catch some sweet waves!!! So I found the cheapest car I could find, which actually ended up being a sweet Toyota hatchback with just enough room to accommodate me and a Maui board for 7 nights. And it was a 6 speed stick shift, so I got to up the antes on my left hand side driving skills, and of coarse the rental with the very minimal insurance to add to the challenge. That is a great car, quick as all get up and great on MPG or I guess to be metrically correct LPKm. Got some tips from a couple of very helpful outdoor store guys on where to catch the best waves, and boy where they right. Actually, I started off catching a bit too much wave, I couldnt even get out beyond the breaking point! They just kept pushing me back into shore. Rented a board and now I remember how hard it is.

I started off at just north of Byron Bay, less people to see me make act a foo but still sposta be great waves. Even though I can see, what seems to me, like amazing waves to ride wave after wave, it is hard to know where they are going to be and be there at the right time. You gotta be at the right place at the right time, which can be a task in itself! Especially when your where there are the biggest waves in the world and your trying to paddle through them with a 7 foot board.
Had about the scariest moment ive had in the ocean. Started getting pushed to an area where waves where comin from both sides. it started pushing and pulling me around and i noticed how far from shore i actually was. So i started to try and swim to shore but it didnt help, i wasnt going anywhere but back and forth parallel to shore and it seemed like i was going further out. I tried to swim parallel to shore, I guess I remember some life saving techniques from watching Baywatch or something, but i could feel the same current that brought me there pulling me back. So I tried the opposite way, also parallel with shore. When I started to feel like id make some ground id look back to shore and realize i was just being pushed back and forth with my efforts resulting to nill. I was getting worried but i could still see people on shore and i could have started yelling for them to get help but i want sure when exactly it was to become a serious situation. I knew that i was NOT in control of where i was going, I knew that i had tried everything i could think of to try and get to shore, I also tried just riding a wave in like id seen so many other kids do, but they seemed to carry me a bit then drop me off for the undertow to take me right back, I was getting tiered but i thought maybe just the right wave hasnt come yet, the ones that when your in the right place and the right time they push you all the way onto shore like id seen so many others do before. I could have been 5 feet away from that perfect place/time and I would have no idea because i didnt know how to identify this. The right place is where the wave is peaking and is about to curl and the right time is when it curls. That is the point sufers ride , THAT point that the water is pulling you toward the oncoming wave and just before the wave breaks its peak, AKA the best USA midnight movie staring Keanu Reeves AKA Point Break. So maybe the next waves gonna take me back in. Or maybe somebody on shore sees Ive gotten into a secretly forbidden area and is about to tell someone to come and get me, or maybe that lone wave-watcher sitting on the beach, who Im sure has at least once noticed me this afternoon looking like a fish outta water in the water. While contemplating all this and reminding myself the most important thing to do is to stay calm, and trying to keep an eye out to shore to make sure im not getting too far out, while stuck in decision making mode I simply get picked up by this huge wave and it coasts me right to shore. Before I had time to realize I was back in 2 feet of water. That was a real reminder of whos in charge and how little and powerless i am when compared to an unimagenable force that has the power to turn a boulder into millions of tiny specks. And said force continues exherting this same amazing energy again and again, wave agfter wave, day after day, millenia after millenia no matter if im there watching or not, no matter if im in the right place or the wrong place, no matter if im here watching and finally understanding it or sleeping or worrying about my little life, those waves are gonna keep on pushin and pulling.

I was told that Coolangotta had THE biggest waves in the world, its where quicksilver and roxy pro hold yearly compatitions.

After a few days of getting tossed around by the waves I drove threw some small towns. Stopped and walked around Mulumbimby, its suppost to be the coolest new folk/hippie area in eastern Australia, they where holding a music festival that night with australian bands. Word on the street is that jack johnson has a house in the area and comes out to play some times. Didnt see any stars but I did meet some pretty cool locals that gave me a tour and bout me some beer. Some older ladies, althou pretty hip partiers and extensive travlers. One of them told me about dating one of the richest men in Japan at the time, she had gone there on a whim and tryed her hand(?) at stripping. She told me about some amazing places she loved in India that I should go.

Dropped the car back off in Brisbane, stayed a couple more days watching people take heroin in some really nice public parks over looking a bridge. I dont have any pics from this time cause my cam was broke. Couldnt handle the harsh conditions of Australia I guess :)

Australia!!!

Sooooooooo, Australia, theres been sooo much that has happened that I would be on here for days trying to put it all down, Ill put what i can and maybe add more later as after thoughts.

Start at the begining?
I came into Sydney Nov 2, walked around in the blazing hot sun and warm breezy nights for a couple of days checking out the amazing parks and wandering the city. The first day I went to a park near the harbor to see the iconic bay area and I found something more entertaining, huge bats! Huge red furried bats flying around in the bright sunlight, and it wasnt just a few, it was hundreds of these things hanging from trees. It was like i was in a zoo, and there are parrots flying around, as frequent as seagulls in MI, and some crazy long beaked bird walking around (check my pics). The park I was at was really great and all the different vegitation, it all had similarities to what Id seen before but it was just different in some way, like the huge rooted trees, all the diffrent palm trees, pine trees with vertical needle bunches instead of horizontal, trees with branches that had roots dangeling down and some that had gotten to the ground and looks like a seperate tree, trees with multiple trunksgoing down to the ground, on and on...

Some other diferent stuff in Australia:
-They have car/trucks!!! they sell them new, theres two of them: a ford falcon or a Holden/GM Commador Ute, sure wish they'd sell them in the US!
-A cool little van called a Suzuki Carry, google it...
-There are also ALOT of flat nosed smaller economical vans on the roads, lots for businesses and lots of travelers.
-Locals really dress up when they go out to eat and to the bar at night time
-There are drinking fountains @ cross walks in the city!!!
-There are Australian black crows that sound like that redrum kid from the movie The Shining
-The good surfing areas remind me of So Cal, vacation areas remind me of florida, and the cities kinda remind me of canadian cities turned tropical.

Court came in from Iraq after a couple of days and it was great to see her again althou she was dead tired after a long flight and crazy time travels. We hung out in Sydney for a few more days checking out the seafood market, flee markets, finding cheap eats, playing on monuments and hitting the Op-Shops harrrrrd (Op-shop = thrift/opportunity). Court actually had to get a 3 teir expandable suitcase to accomidate all the sweet finds.

We hit the road starting off visiting the Blue mountains (the color comes from the haze of eucaliptis), and back to the coast to visit cities like: Booti Booti, Gympie, Mooball, Coolingotta, Pimpama, Surfers paradise (that actually doesnt have very good surfing compared to near bye places), Tweed heads, and this is just the east coast...

We found some amazing beaches, picture perfect everytime and desolate as can be, partly because the whole coast is full of them so you just pull over and take your pick. One of the campsites we stayed at was a 20km drive down a bumpy backroad, something I vowed never to attemped again after Edweena's little "incedent", but it was well worth it. We where in the middle of nowhere with a beach to ourselves as far as my eyes could see. We played with the waves a while, played frizbee a while, and just enjoyed each others company and lack of company. The waves where amazing, we would be about 10 feet out from shore and a big one would hit us and knock us down. Some would swipe you off your feet and tumble you towards shore losing track of which way is up. The coolest one picked me off my feet and dragged me with my shoulder being the only thing suporting me, for about 10 feet! There where many times I would watch Court playing and a sec later Id see just her feet straight in the air! Its an amazing power with relatively limitless energy.

When we got further north, closer to the Queensland boarder, we finally saw some kangaroos! It was interesting actually see how when they are eating and want to just move forward a bit they use thier tails like a 3rd set of legs to move them forward. And to see them hop around, i cant even imagine how strong thier legs and tails are to be able to move that much mass as swiftly as they do. We stopped at a koala park later on the trip to try and find one but no such luck. And near a spot where a local said we just missed the whale watching by a week, it was a spot where the humpback whales pass by on there way south with thier new borns to go back to their feeding grounds. The southern ocean is where they feed and store up for the swim north during which they dont stop and eat. They then travel about 12000 km to get from the southern ocean to the tropical breeding grounds in the coldest months. They head back threw before the southern hemespheres summer time with their newborns with the peak time to see them being around Sept. So we missed the last few whales coming through but I did see what seemed to be a dolphin from the beach one early morning.

We got to the resort near Bundaberg (why yes they make a rum there, and why yes we had more then our share of sampling) after a few days of beach combing the coast and it was a nice relief to be able to get a good nights sleep, WITH AC!!! So we where livin the good life :) The area was one of the only spots to get to the Barrier Reef from the beach so we checked out snorkling for a couple of days and saw a sea eel and snake, a ray, a small shark!, many beautiful fish, coral, sharp barnacles, no sponge Bob to my multiple shagrins. Snorklin is fun and all but BEWARE! The most dangerous thing about it is not even in the water, its being in the water mid-day, getting lost in this other world while your backside is getting TOASTED! Well worth it though, FO SHO!!!

Near the resort in Bargara we found Mon Repos which is one of the two largest Loggerhead turtle rookeries in the South Pacific Ocean! So we were rockin on the turtle watching, very quitly mind you, so as to not disturb the moma poopin her eggs out. And boooyyy did she have a load, 100plus! cant member the exact # but it was alot, when I get the pics up you can countem yerself if ya like. After we watched moma crawl back to the ocean (which itself is an amazing thing, how she is able to move that huge mass) Me and Court got to help move the eggs to a safer location that is less likely to get washed into the tide. I squeezed one of the eggs, VERY gingerly, and it felt like a soggy pingpong. They mark, record and keep track of all the different locations of eggs to better understand the turtles. They did say that the lights kept on overnight in the nearby towns distract the young when they hatch and waddle back to the sea. They look for the light on the horizon to know which direction the water is and whith competing lights they get diverted which may result in more fatalities. All the more reason to shut your lights off when your not using them, AND another thing to keep in mind, balloons, cute little baby turtles love to try and eat those brightly colored death traps, so next time you think about getting a ballon as a gift, FORGET IT! Unless you want that out weighing your karma.