Lisa's Hospitality and Byron's Hosteliality

We stayed for one night down in Coogee Bay. This place was relaxed and it looked a bit like a better photo of a place like this.


We finally managed to meet up with Tori who played hockey with Helen at Uni. (If you recall, we were going to meet her in Laos, but she had a few too many 'shroom shakes and we just generally had the shakes.) Then Emma had to leave us to go back up to Brisbane and Noosa to go back to work.

At some point or another in the four or five months prior to our arrival - don't look at me, I'd been drinking - Helen had got in contact, or vice versa, with her old school friend Lisa Guy.

Lisa had said that while we had a few days left in Sydney we could come and stay in her flat as her flatmate Alice was away for a week or so. We were ecstatic at the offer and shifted our bags round for a most enjoyable few days and nights. It was a great feeling to have what felt like our own little space again and it was in a good location to have a better explore of Sydney too.

Again, we're hugely indebted to Lisa (and Alice too!) as not only was it great fun but it saved us an Australian monkey, as rent even in the shittiest of hostels in Sydney is higher than Bush Jnr during the Vietnam war.

The time in the flat allowed us to find our feet a bit, write some blog and eat some food. And eat we did. I took it upon myself to eat anything that I saw.

To quote my little sister: 'You looked fat in Australia. Well, really chubby. Well, either that or you were just standing next to boys who might exercise occasionally.' Cheers Chloe.

Also in Sydney, if you haven't heard already, as she made enough of a racket about it, Tony and Guy (both of 'em) ballsed up Helen's hair, and she essentially got bumrushed out of the shop by the artistic director for the southern hemisphere or someone equally unimportant in the real world.

She was angry, like this:







She did eventually get it sorted out though, and then she was happy, like this:



We visited Bondi Beach, which was everything I hate about everything.

We had another special night out in the famous World Bar (not world famous bar) this time with Lisa and later a few of her friends.

I am distinctly red. That's not sunburn or embarrassment, that's just the colour of my skin.

We were seriously winding down into holiday mode, and readying ourselves for our first foray into Byron Bay.

Emma had clubbed a few days holiday out of her boss, and when she made the trip down the coast to us she also brought along her boss's mate Rick 'The Rat' who was over in Australia on holiday.

Byron Bay was pretty good fun, and not much else, with a few bars that played good live music. We did manage to meet back up with Jose. Out of the blue we also got an email from Pip who was at Southampton in our first year, and we met up with her for a few days too.

We didn't do much here apart from laze around, so I'll let the photos do the talking (or typing, or whatever).

We did drive to a hippy commune called Nimbin where reputedly you could buy cookies that would make you chuckle. But the police presence was greater there than in a particularly good episode of Taggart, so we left empty-handed and went to the pub instead. Much healthier for us...

It was at this pub, and later club, that we learned that Rick, rather than dancing, would slap walls as hard as he possibly could.

Strange? Yes. Idiotic? Yes. But he's a nice bloke and a great laugh so I won't have you say another bad word about him.


'Twas this fateful night that I made the embarrassing move of - after realising Jose had never spoken about a girlfriend - suddenly becoming very aware of how much everyone was saying things were 'gay'. Therefore, naturally, as any man would, I took him outside of the bar and asked if he habitually fucked men in the arse.

The answer was no. But, for some unfathomable reason, I categorically wouldn't let it lie, and for around twenty five minutes I dug myself deeper and deeper into a homosexual mistake hole.

But it was all OK in the end.

Apart from when anyone mentions what happened, speaks about Jose or says the word 'embarrassing'. Then I get the same sick feeling you have about ten seconds after you've been kicked in the balls.

Anyway, after this giant craziness we made our way up to Noosa, a strange place where people poo money. Metaphorically.