We arrived in Byron Bay after an overnight bus and having been unable to secure any accommodation in any solid buildings we made our way to our permanent tent.....yes tent. It's ok, it only cost us $180 a night!!! The people were lovely though and it was actually quite nice to get away from the general teenage back-packer grunge that made up most of the accommodation in Byron Bay.
Now, for those of you who do not know Byron Bay is one of the must go to places for any back-packer heading up the east coast. This is for obvious reasons as there are lots of surf schools (which can be found almost anywhere in OZ where there is a beach), there are lots of coffee shops (...again they aren't short of them in most populated areas), the beach is nice (..................Australia is kind of one big sandy beach!!) and drugs and alcohol seem to be in full flow wherever you look.
Well we jumped on the band wagon (surfing, not the other stuff!!) and had some surf lessons which left Louise close to tears and me with no skin left on my fingertips. Needless to say that we decided our careers weren't about to change at this point and we would remain professionals and not give it up for a life searching for the perfect wave!! We decided to move on with little persuasion and headed to the capital of Queensland, Brisbane.
It was at this point that we realised that we were 'old' when it came to traveling as we moved into our 24 bed dorm that stank of MAN and left a lot to be desired in terms of security, hygiene.... and well pretty much any creature comfort that we mature back-packers had come to crave. Unfortunately it wasn't the only thing about Brisbane that we weren't too keen on but what it did provide us with was a great opportunity to plan the rest of our time in Australia.
We met a lovely Irish girl, Katie, who was desperate to book us tours, camper vans and diving trips. After booking our mandatory 'hug a Koala' trip we ended up having a good laugh with her and after LOTS of discussion we left her with several options to work on overnight, which included some travel agent party (everything on the east coast seems to involve some kind of party?). As we were a bit bored in Brisbane we spent a lot of time researching ourselves into the evening and a very resourceful Louise found a discount code on twitter to leave us in a very good position to negotiate. For those who know us, we like to negotiate and drive a bargain!
Katie was so pumped up about what a great deal she had for us and it was a shame to see her be deflated by our own research......but what a star she was as we got an e-mail later that day saying she would not only match our price but gave us a huge discount on top!! We ended up getting our camper van for £15 a day which was an amazing deal and big discounts on our diving and other tours. So we left Brisbane on a bit of a high and on to the paradise beach of Noosa!!
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