First and foremost, I'd like to personally thank the shitty computers at REEFOS shitty youth hostel for their exceedingly excellent performance.  I'm glad that i've spent the equivalent in time and money of a large evening meal on rewriting this essay 6 or 9 times this evening. I've thouroughly enjoyed it.

SO. After our weedy antics in Nimbin we hightailed it to our next destination: Byron Bay.  What a lovely beachside town, where all the barefooted boarders walk the streets sporting quicksilver trucker hats over curly golden sunkissed locks. The shops all sold board gear and every second car was a vw hippie van.  We spent 4 sunny days in Byron Bay, learning to surf and camping in the Ren and Stimpymobile.  We spent a groovy evening in a great nightclub by the name of "Cheeky Monkeys," a superb backpacker haven full of youths sipping alcoholic beverages and jumping and jiving to their fave tunes...

Our next stop was Surfers Paradise, where we had a minor group fallout that all ended in tears:Boys club vs girls club...and we were outnumbered... however we got over ourselves and me and Jill spent the next day amongst some of Queensland's finest at the wild and wonderful DREAM WORLD, an action-packed 12 hours of waiting in long lines observing the behavior of classy families for minute-long rides of thrill and excitement...the general theme park deal....it was rather shit, but jill enjoyed it. 

After a group drinking binge of a night in Surfers Paradise we hightailed Ren and Stimpy back to Brisbane where we sadly returned her in all her glory.  After checking the credit card status and scrawling a measly list of a couple pros and cons,  I made the hasty decision to become an honorary member of the boys club for the last leg of the road trip up to Cairns.  Jillian was to remain in Brisbane.  So we said our goodbyes and went to pick up our next wickedy wick van. Conspicuousmobile #2: SOUTH PARK. Classy.  Next stop: Noosa.

Noosa was a very posh seaside town where south park fit right in.  We spent a super day on the beach burying each other and walked the streets counting the expensive houses and cars and counting the 50c peices/receipts and shitty bits of paper in our wallets.  We then hit the road for Hervey Bay, departure point for our 4x4 Fraser Island adventure...

 We met up with the 5 other members of our expedition over dinner and comprised a shopping list for the 3day/2night extravaganzaa that consisted of all the essentials for an off-roading sandy mudfest: eggs, wine, and items such as cream, brie, and sweet chilli sauce (how these landed themselves on the list i dont know).  The next morning we spent an unGODly $50 each on produce and alcohol and packed up the truck to ferry ourselves over to the sandy isle.  It turned out to be a fantastic 3 days, the group was lead by an outspoken posh indian by the name of SHIROZ who taught me how to cut vegetables, how to drive, and how to clean out a cooler full of broken eggs.  She took to calling me sweetie pie, and honey, which I thought was rather sweet of her seeing as she was much older and wiser, having that one year under her belt at the age of 22.  It actually ended up turning out to be a good laugh, we camped on some amazing beaches that you could sit on and not see the end to either side of you. We had some fantastic bbqs (our food supplies were actually spot-on) and drank plenty of beer. We spotted whales, dolphins and dingos and all got a chance to drive the trucks down the beach.  After returning back to the mainland and emptying our pockets,  bags, ears, and scalps of sand, we then began to try to remove the sand from things that didnt even go to the island with us (how does sand do that??)

We had one night to recuperate and recover before our next adventure, our 3 day sailing trip to the Whitsundays. 

We had a little bit of a joke around about the trip before we went, all agreeing how it was going to be a glorified boozefest with 27 boozy irish backpackers meatheads, consisting of "sailing" through shit rainy weather while listening to irish drinking songs and then not being able to go to sleep at night in fear of having to listen to the backpacker lovemaking antics in the cabins below.  The "New Horizon" turned out to be a 40 year old motorboat with sails for show and a crew that consisted of Pervy Pete, some French wanker and another meathead cook.  We were dropped off to go diving in the stinger-infested waters and picked up on shore 3 hours later, with purple lips and symptoms of pneumonia. However we did see a rather large Giant Wrasse fish by the name of Elvis in the duration of the shit dive from hell.

Needless to say, the best part of the 3day cruise from hell was stepping off the boat and waving goodbye to our fellow meathead crewmembers.

And that's that......here I am, back in Airlie Beach. One thing i've learned: budget is not always better.