A Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (Dec 24 - Jan 2)

While in Cairns the previous weeks, I noticed that slowly more and more Christmas decorations were being put up across the city. If you've ever been away from the snow for Christmas, you'll know it is a very strange feeling. Sitting by the pool in 30+ degrees, not wanting to move too much is not what I'm used to and does not put me in the Christmas spirit. But, there could be worse things happening in my life at the time than not feeling very Christmasy because the city I'm in has beautiful blue skies and hot weather.

We decided to spend our Christmas in Airlie Beach, which is the launch point for all the Whitsunday Island trips. Coming into Airlie was quite nice, they have beautiful hill side homes with views of the sea and a nice winding road into a small beach side town, pretty standard look for smaller east coast towns but nice none the less. We stayed in a hostel called Magnums, which was the party hostel of Airlie, complete with big loud bar attached and McDonald's directly beside it. This was the perfect location for a nice relaxing holiday season. One of the first things we did was book a our trip to the Whitsunday Islands, we decided on a Catameran sailing trip and booked it for between Christmas and New Years.

After being in Cairns for so long and doing so much drinking, I was at the point where I just wanted to take it easy and really just relax over the holidays (holiday within a holiday, Relaxception). The room we were given was perfect for this, it was right at the entrance to the cabin area so everyone had to walk by to get in and out (you had to walk through the bar to get to where all the rooms were, and they were separated into 2 floor cabins). So I would just sit outside with a few roomates (Irish guys) and sometimes Robert, have a few beers and chat to all the people walking by. Depending on how many beers the Irish guys would drink the comments to the passers by, normally females, would get increasingly funnier and more inappropriate; at one point one of the guys was just yelling out "DAAYYYUUUMMMMMM" as girls went by. This continued on into the evenings and through the night, and as the passers by got more drunk the conversations and antics got much more entertaining. I witnessed all kinds of crazy antics out there, ranging from people puking after being spun around to domestic disputes to people trying cartwheels and other aerial manoeuvres.

*WARNING: The following story contains sexual acts please skip if you are easily offended. Thank you*

The highlight of sitting outside the room was on Christmas day. It was the night time and as usual we were sitting outside the room, having a drink and chatting to the people. By this point we had a few more people gathered than normal, some with their own chairs, and a big enough group that I didn't talk to the people on the other side of the circle because they were too far and had other people obstructing my view. As it was Christmas, there were quite a few Santa hats floating around, but there was only one guy (from Scotland) who had the full suit and beard, and as expected he was getting a lot of attention from the ladies. He was going in and out of the bar quite frequently, but eventually he settled in our group and joined the conversation.

There were two Canadian girls (Note: At first I thought they were from Alberta, but when I met them again in Brisbane I found out they were from BC..but thats not very important. Another note: The louder of the two girls kept calling the other one a rookie..this comes into play later) sitting directly across from me, but there was a high table that obstructed my view of their

faces a bit. Santa decides it would be a good idea to give these girls a Christmas lap-dance, so with the music from the bar blaring, he proceeds to grind on the first girl (the quieter one) and basically just stick his junk in her face. She's having a good time, laughing and what not, and playing a long a little bit getting a bit more involved with her hands. This goes on for maybe twenty to thirty seconds before Santa moves on to the next girl, and being the dominant of the two friends she obviously had to out do her friend. As he's dancing on her, she gets a bit MORE involved with her hands than the first girl, and after a while she just pulls out "Santa's little helper" and proceeds to go to town on him (I'm referring to fellatio for those who aren't following). This goes on for a few seconds before one of the Irish guys tries to get the dudes attention, to which he replies "SHUT UP IM BUSY HERE!" So here we all are sitting around on Christmas night while Santa is getting a blow job after a hard night of delivering presents. Merry Christmas indeed. I couldn't have made the story any better if I tried.

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We were meant to depart for our Whitsunday Islands trip on either the 26th or 27th (can't remember anymore), but when we arrived the spokesperson told us the weather was not going to be ideal for sailing so we had to reschedule. We decided on rescheduling to New Years because, there was no other accommodation available at the time and we had nothing booked, so it wasn't all too bad that we had to change. Being on a sail boat for New Years was a bit of a tricky situation, if there is a good group then it could be amazing, but if the group is bad and even worse the boat itself is bad, then there's no where else to go and you're stuck in a sucky situation. Also, all the people we talked to were saying that Magnums during New Years is the place to be and why were we going on our trip at that time, etc etc.. And the final thing that had us a bit thrown was we met a girl who went on the trip a few days earlier and she hated it, she told us all the beds were wet all the time, the food wasn't great, and it was just all around not a great time.

I think in the end this helped make the trip better, going in with such low expectations there was no way it could turn out all that bad; and it didn't. Aside from the captain of the ship being a bit of a dickhead, everything turned out alright, we had a decent mix of people on the boat and the cook was pretty hot so I didn't really care what the food tasted like I just chatted with her the whole time and told her to was good anyway. For the actual New Years Eve celebration, we just chilled outside and played some funny drinking games and had our own little countdown, including sparklers and flashing lights provided by the crew (who were not allowed to drink unfortunately).

The next night however, was not so civilized, for me at least. I'll keep it brief because I don't actually remember much, but all I know is we were playing a drinking game called ride the bus, and I got through two rounds and had to be filled in on the rest the next day. Apparently, I was getting quite loud and rambunctious, and found myself outside banging on the skylight window of the cabins telling people to open the windows so I could jump down. Robert said he asked me why I wanted to jump down instead of just go through the door, and I said because it was much cooler this way. After jumping down through the skylight I promptly jumped into the bed of one of the Swedish girls who was on the boat, we had been talking a bit earlier so I guess I thought this was the best opportunity to make my move. She stayed and cuddled with me for a while, but then it either got too hot oorrrrrr she realized who was with her and she left and went to sleep outside with her friends. The day after was one of those "How are YOUUUU doing today, har har har" kind of days, letting you know that you made a bit of a fool of yourself the previous day and everybody knew it except you.

Apart from the drinking and festivities we did actually visit the islands during this time as well. We went to White Haven beach, which was absolutely gorgeous, the sand was so white, and the water was blue it was amazing; first time on the east coast that it reminded me of the water on the west coast. We only spent maybe an hour or so at the beach, which was a bit of a shame because it took a while to walk there from the shore that we arrived on. But it was still worth it to go.

When we arrived back on land, I was feeling pretty ill, I couldn't even eat my McDonalds, but it serves me right. Anyway, we decided not to stay another night in Airlie and to headout that day on our way to Brisbane (next big city on the coast). We stopped in a random little town called Maryborough and set up camp for the night, we also tried to use the kitchen of a caravan park but got caught and kicked out. Thug liiiiiiife.

Peace & Love

Back on the Road: Mission Beach, Tablelands, Townsville (Dec 19 - Dec 23)

After three long drunken weeks, a diving licence and a few forgotten nights we (Robert, Ingrid and I) finally left Cairns. Rob stayed behind and got work on a banana farm in Mareeba so Ingrid decided she wanted to continue on with Robert and I. Initially Robert wanted to find a fourth person to join us, which he did but at the last minute he decided she wasn't the right fit for the group and so he told her she no longer had a ride on the day we were supposed to leave.. harsh reality of the backpacking world. He told her via text and she sent back a text a long the lines of "BUT I'VE ALREADY PACKED ALL MY STUFF AND EVERYTHING!"...womp womp womp... Honesty is not always the best policy when trying to secure a ride.

Anyway, we quickly forgot about the girl that was and began our journey down the east coast. Our first stop was Mission beach, we arrived at the beach rest area quite late and decided not to pay (as per usual) and just leave early in the morning. It was noticeably colder than Cairns eventhough it was only a few hours away, while there we met a group of French people. The one guy had been travelling for over 2 years (1 y ear Australia, 1 year Japan, and now back to Australia) and his brother and his girlfriend were starting their year long visas in OZ. Interesting thing about them was the guy that had been travelling for over 2 years didn't want to speak French at all, so he made his brother and his girlfriend speak in English all the time. Pretty uncommon among travellers who don't speak English as a first langauge to be speaking english with eachother with no English speakers around, but kind of cool, and a good way to practice. We chatted with them that evening, and they told us about some cool spots in the Tablelands (a region in land Queensland).

The next day we set off quite early to avoid getting caught by the campground owners. We did a couple of scenic walks in the area and ended up seeing some cool wildlife, most notable 2 pretty big goannas (no pics unfortunately, they are too fast and scared), and a bunch of HUGE spiders. The spiders were cool at first because the first ones we saw were off the path a bit, they were about as big as my hand, but then as we got deeper into the walk there were more and they were sometimes in the middle of the path. You had to keep a sharp eye or else you might end up walking into a spider as big as your face and that would be uncomfortable. Also, there were spider webs strewn across the path everywhere, so you had to walk with a stick in front of your face anyway to get the webs out of the way.

The walks themselves were very nice though, lush forest and a nice view at the end of both, well worth it. We continued on the the Tablelands after this, which was a very nice area, filled with waterfalls, wildlife and rainforest. We saw the Curtain Fig Tree, a fig tree that had another fig tree growing on top of it; quite impressive. We also saw tree Kangaroos (I think they got lazy with naming this animal, because it looks nothing like a Kangaroo, the only similarity is that it hops...but lots of things here hop), a Platypus (this was AWESOME, they are too fast to get any pictures, and when they are going slow its not actually a Platypus it was a swimming rat that looks like a Platypus). We had to go to a special place to see the Platypus, and we walked up and down the area for a long time (Ingrid was not pleased with this), but it was worth it in the end to see such a strange looking and rare animal. And as I said we saw LOTS of waterfalls, I won't go into too much detail about the waterfalls because there were so many, but the highlight was seeing the widest waterfall in Australia and Murray Falls, which was where we camped that night, but the falls were a bit of a surprise because we arrived at night. We could hear the falls when we arrived but we had no idea how awesome they were until we visited them in the morning, very powerful falls with a nice boulder-y backdrop (see pictures for wowness), there were a ridiculous amount of march flies though, when I got up in the morning my tent was covered in them and while packing the car I'm sure we let in at least 200.

After seeing the spectacular waterfall and almost being eaten alive by march flies we set off again and ended up in Townsville for the evening. We decided to stay two nights (Robert just slept in his car, Ingrid and I stayed in a hostel) just to chill out a bit and see a bit of the city. Didn't really do anything exciting just walked around, I got offered a job in a kebab shop.

Side story - Townsville: A Lively Nightlife

Robert got pretty drunk on the first night and almost got in a fight but ended up selling his shoes for $50 (he paid $20). This is a pretty funny story that started off with us getting free drinks from a couple of bosses (courtesy of Ingrid's flirting skills), they all owned other bars and were friends with the owner of the bar we were in so we scooped as many free drinks as we could. As the night progressed I slowed my drinking and Robert continued, he ended up making out with a girl in a cow dress (that was his pick up line too.. "You're wearing an appropriate dress for this bar" it was called the Mad Cow) and an older Asian lady whos boyfriend was somewhere else in the bar at the time. I decided to have an early night so I left Robert in that bar and went back to the hostel, before arriving I decided to grab something to eat. I stopped near the bar and was enticed by a $5 chips + gravy sign, my first thought obviously was, gotta have DAT poutine. Normally when somewhere offers chips and gravy if you ask for cheese on it they do it for free, because they think its so strange they just do it. I then go on to explain that I am Canadian and that it's something that started in Montreal and it's called a poutine and they should probably put it on the menu.

Anyway, I took my big box of delicious greasy goodness over to the club across the street and decided to watch the drunk people pile out of the club while I ate. This turned out to be an awesome idea, I saw all kinds of things, and girls kept coming up to me asking for some of my friends, I made a few of them do dances or tell me jokes before giving them anything. I saw all kinds of things while sitting outside, a few guys came out bloody, some were thrown out by 2-3 bouncers, eventually I saw Robert stumble out of this club so I called him over to sit down. We sat there for a while talking to all the people, we saw one argument between a homeless Aboriginal guy and a late 20s-early 30s Maori guy, at first the Maori guy was joking around a bit with the Aboriginal guy, but then suddenly something changed and all I heard was the Maori guy say something like "What do you mean this is your land? This is my land!" some kind of mad native argument, but he ended up shoving the Aboriginal guy over pretty hard and he hit his head on a wooden pole (made a really loud noise, and sounded really gross) and he started bleeding, while the other guy walked off. There were ambulance on the scene pretty swiftly, Robert was an ambulance driving for some time so he rushed over and helped the guy and told the ambulance what happened.

He then started to complain about all the people hovering around, saying they weren't helping so they should just go. Things settled down a bit after that, until this short Aboriginal guy came up to us, he first asked me for my shoes so he could get into the club, and offered me $50 for them.. seen as I paid $60 I chuckled a bit and declined. He didn't take too kindly to my chuckling, but he went ahead and asked me for some fries anyway, I obliged because I'm a nice guy, but then he sticks his whole hand in and is mad touching up my fries so I asked him to take his whole hand outta my food...blah blah blah etc...

Anyway, he then asked Robert for his shoes and he gave them to him for $50. I can't really remember how the conversation progressed after that, but the highlights are the guy telling us he was going to go look for someone in the club and bring them back out for his boss, and Robert threatening the guy (did I mention Robert is about 6'4 and pretty well built and the other guy was maybe 5'3 and a bit round) by gripping his shirt and telling him he's a muay thai fighter and he probably doesn't want to be drinking out of a straw for Christmas dinner. And the guy never ended up going in the club anyway! All in all a pretty funny night, and good times in Townsville.

Peace & Love

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza: Gilligan's First Ever Pool Party! (Dec 17 - Dec 18)

As my birthday was rapidly approaching I decided Cairns would be a nice place to spend the celebration of my 24th year. Also, there was much talk about Gilligan's (the hostel I was staying in) first ever pool party, which just happened to land on the same day as my birthday. So I had a nice time going around telling everyone that the pool party was actually my birthday party. The first night of my birthday weekend was not too different from other nights in Cairns, lots of drinking and going to multiple different clubs/bars. Except this time Julius was telling everyone it was my birthday (I did the same for him on his birthday), so I was getting lots of free drinks and other things... The next morning, the day of my birth, I woke up a bit hung over, but ready for the days events. I started drinking goon at around 11am, and quickly realized it was going to be a very messy day.

After drinking for maybe 2 hours, Julius and I decided to go get some food, so I grabbed my 1.5 ltr water bottle filled with goon and took a trip to Red Rooster. This was a pretty hilarious walk through Cairns, complete with telling random girls it was my birthday, and teaching Julius the "sober walk" which is basically the "I'm the Wiz" walk from Seinfeld, but done while drunk to show others that you aren't drunk at all and you are just out for a casual stroll around town. We returned to Gilligan's filled with food and continued to drink in anticipation of the pool party which would start shortly.

We headed down to the pool party right as it was starting so we didn't miss any of the awesomeness, by this point I was pretty drunk. At the entrance to the pool party we were greeted by hot girls in bikinis giving out the entrance stamps (Note: I thought it would be a great idea to bring my drivers licence so I could prove to people it was my birthday), I told them, as I did everyone else, that it was my birthday and flashed my ID to confirm. So they stamped me all over my body and let us in. We played in the pool for a while with some giant balls, trying to balance on them and other silly things, we also started doing flips off the stage they set up in the water for the bikini fashion show (still drinking goon at this point by the way). Then the bikini fashion show started, I'm not sure why but by this point I was the only one in the pool I assume my friends were sitting around the pool like everybody else. That wasn't for me though, I swam right up to the stage and proceeded to cheer on the girls as they walked past, nothing vulgar, mostly golf claps and compliments on their necklaces and shoes (like a sir), but I was standing right underneath them so that was funny. The models mostly just laughed and said thank you, I got a few winks though cuz I'm cool like that, I'm sure they could tell I was quite intoxicated.

After drinking and lounging in the pool for an hour or so after the fashion show I got back together with my friends and we headed back up to the room to continue drinking and get ready for the night. Before getting ready, I participated in two goon related activities, one was called the Goon Spin and the other we made a name for and it was Goon Shower. A Goon Spin is when you drink from the goon bag and spin around at the same time, you see how many times you can spin before you have to stop, I got up to six and almost fell when I stopped. The Goon Shower I actually have a video of this on facebook, one guy was pouring goon from the second floor of the hostel out into the common area, and he just yelled out GOON SHOWER, so about 6 of us lined up and awaited our prize. He poured out the goon on all of us as we drank and laughed, trying to get as much as we could in our mouths. It was pretty disgusting afterwards because we were all sticky, but it was a good reason to take a much needed shower.

I got changed and we started to play several different drinking games, this continued for some time, many games were played and too many drinks were had (by now I was at the point where I was wearing the goon box on my head and calling it a helmet). We then moved the party outside to join a larger group (at Gilligan's there are always people drinking outside.. ALWAYS), we played even more drinking games some new to me which made them even more difficult in my current state, which meant I had to drink even more. After a while we went back inside and were going to go out, unfortunately for me, I was too far gone at this point and just threw up, drank 2 ltrs of water and went straight to sleep. So I didn't even make it out on the night of my birthday... oh and it was only 10pm by this point...lightweight smh.. I did however sleep for 11 hours, so that was nice.

The lesson to be learned here is: party hard, and then party harder, it's only your birthday once a year. And I had a pretty successful one I must say.

PS - Luckily I didn't lose my drivers licence or my debit card that night, but they did end up being stuck together with gum some how.. which I obviously thought was awesome.. "Look one side debit, the other side ID! PERFECT"....

Peace & Love