Gday Mates!

Dear Fam and Friends,

Cheers from the land down under, we've made it alive all the way from Thailand about an 8 hour flight overnight. The flight was good and we didn't get the best sleep but Thai airways took care of us very nice and it was a smooth flight compared to our other sketchy inner island Thailand flights. We flew into Sydney and got a cabi to our hotel on Coogee Beach about 15 minutes from downtown Sydney. After checking in we caught up with Meadow and exchanged some much anticipated hugs, releaved to see another good buddy. We also shortly after met up with our mate Tom whom we're staying with now in Central Coast. I met Tom in Belgium and we traveled with he and his buddy Josh, whom we just caught up with as well, through Amsterdam and Berlin last year during our Europe treck.

The first day we just chilled at the beach and body surfed as it was a super nice day with some great shore breaks that reminded me of a beach in Hawaii. There's heaps of beautiful topless girls on the beaches so in between body surfing you can guess what we were doing haha. That night we went out for a couple beers and soon realized it was Monday night and the bars were dead so we called it an early night. The second day we walked across the street to the beach again and chilaxed for most the day and did a bit of Halloween shopping which turned out not very successful but we got to see a little of Coogee Beach town which was cool. That night we went downtown early to catch the sunset at Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House but ended up getting to Darling Harbor and getting lost trying to find them. We ended up finding the landmarks after a couple hours and seeing them for the first time was pretty cool because it's one of those country symbols that you always see that you've never seen, so it was good. The Opera House is bigger than I expected and the entire harbor is breath taking with the cityscape in the backdrop. We went to an Irish bar that night but again it was an early week day night and nothing was happening so we called it pretty early.

The next day we went to Coogee Beach for a bit and then hopped on a bus and landed downtown by where the bridge and opera house were. We went to the Opera house first and got some pretty sick jump shots and walked around inside for a bit. We then walked towards the Harbor Bridge and got lost and ended up seeing another cool spot called "The Rocks" which was part of the city built into the rocks and supposedly according to Tom used to be a really hard part of town in the late 1800's. Reaching the bridge we decided to walk across it which was pretty chill because it gave us an insanely good view of the Harbor Bridge and the cityscape. All in all, after meandering around the city for some hours we decided it was just another big city and weren't super impressed although the harbor was pretty spectacular. That night we got back relatively early so that we could throw some costumes together and take off into the night for Halloween! Aussies don't celebrate so we knew we had to impress them with our costumes. I'm sad to say they weren't our best but we worked with what we had and ended up dressing in really high gym shorts, short tank tops, moh hawks and wild hair, head bands and our hacky sac to become Team Hack! We were a professional hacky sac team from the 80's and definately played the part! We also found beer holders that were giant condoms which got some good laughs as well. The night all in all was pretty weak but we went to two decent parties with most people dressed in costume so all in all it wasn't that bad and we made the most of it of course and had a blast! I of course woke up the next morning with a giant elephant and it's penis on my back tattooe'd, really funny guys haha.

Today we did as we always do and waited last minute to wing what we were going to do as far as traveling up the east coast for the next two weeks. We found a company that rented these camper vans painted in hippie colors so we thought, what better? We got there today to find that they were all rented out so we ended up renting a toyota camery for even cheaper and the four of us traveled an hour an a half to Terrigal, Central Coast where we are now. We're at Tom's house and his mom is cooking us an amazing fish dinner that I can't wait for as she just made us tiger prawns and cheese bread! We're planning on surfing if it's good tomorrow and doing some fishing and snorkeling the rest of the day so it should be good fun.

The next couple weeks we are planning on camping along the east coast all the way up to Harvery Bay and surfing along the way, should be heaps of fun. We bought some camping gear today so we're hoping to save a little cash doing this versus buying a bus ticket and staying in hostels. It's super expensive here so we really are trying to watch our budget but we'll see, usually in the past this plan never works! Tom's parents are lovely and we just met up with our other mate whom I met in Belgium, his buddy Josh, so we might stay a couple more nights. I'm super stoked about the road trip and I hope we make it alive as we've had a little trouble driving on the left side of the road, haha! I'm sure I've missed stuff but whatever, it'll give us all more to talk about when I get home, which I hope never comes! Anyway, as always off for now...

Cheers,
Grant