Magnetic Island

Me and my sister, Kathryn - First time scootering!!!!

First time Jet Skiing! - The beach (and girls) at Horseshoe Bay

The walk at Airlie Beach - Airlie Beach


So I spent Monday night and all Tuesday on Magnetic Island with my sister, Kathryn. She works at this backpackers resort that's right on the beach with the most stunning view! We rented scooters for the first time and I swear I didn't think we were going to make it one hundred metres. Kathryn couldn't start hers and I couldn't turn. But we finally figured it out and Made our way to the other side of the island... at a crawling 15 km/h! Yeah, the cars behind us were not so happy but whatever, it's a fuckin island man! If you need to be somewhere quickly you're missing the whole point! We got there, eventually, and bought Kathryn new sandals, appearantly not getting paid means you can't buy $10 flip-flops! After a couple hours of sunbaking I hired a jetski and went jetskiing for the first time! MY NEWFOUND LOVE!!!! The thrill of going 90 km/h over water is AWESOME! I was doing tight figure 8's, jumping over my own wake.... everything! So much fun! though my back took a beating and It's still sore 3 days later! I feel like an old man! We ended up being so tired we all passed out back at her place with her roommate before we had the chance to go out drinking. Oh Well, one night off drinking won't CURE my liver!!!

I'm in Airlie Beach now! So Beautiful! I'm going sailing for the next 4 days, which should be AMAZING!!!... oh and appearantly the german backpackers portion of my adventure is over and the American portion has begun. The last two nights I've had two different sets of Uni students in my room! Lots of fun!

Cairns to Magnetic Island!

Saturday I spent walking around Cairns. Not much there really, just the lagoon (man-made pool) and the clubs/pubs. I guess it's a big tourist center because you can go the reef on one of the MANY tours there, bungie jump, skydive, raft white-water, etc. It's more of a place you go to so you can go to other places. Anyways, after walking around and getting chased by a big-ass bee I met up with another animator from AL Sarah and her friend James. We had dinner at this restaurant where the servers were hot! but also as dumb as they were hot! So, as you could imagine, I was in heaven! Not really sure what their jobs were as we had to go up to order and then go and pick up the pick when it was ready, but I didn't care! Then we hit up this western-looking club with Sarah's dormmate's. What's the obsession with black lights?!?!?! SO ANNOYING!

Sunday I took the 6 hour bus ride down to Townsville, Capital of North Queensland :P. I get there and I ask the thing behind the counter at my hostel what's good on a Sunday night? "Cri is the best. It's two blocks away. get there at 9, trust me. Oink." oooohhhkkaaay. So I hang out at my hostel watching Finding Nemo with a bunch of Germans until 9. Now this is what I want for our movie, or any movie that I work on in the future, that it can have EVERYONE riveted and glued to the screen even though they barely speak english! I get to the club @ 9:05 - 9:10ish and the first thing I hear as I enter is: "Do you want to see that shirt coming off?!?!?!?!" SWEET!!! I've walked into the middle of a wet T-shirt contest!!!! Thank you beast!!! The chick who won took everything off but her panties and had some good moves. She ended up coming away with $700 for her... umm... talents. Sorry, no pics.. I thought about it but some guy tried it and the bouncers were all over him. It was funny though cuz once the contest ended all us guys were like "OK, cool... lets talk to some chicks!" and then I turned around and realized there wasn't any so I went back to my hostel and passed out!

Monday will be remembered as the day I walked more than I think I ever have in a day. It started off with me hiking up Townsville's version of the Grouse Grind, except I did it @ 10:30am on a scorching hot day... without having had breakfast... or bringing water... and in flip-flops... yeah I'm a tool! then I walked down it again and down to the beachfront called The Strand; voted Queensland's cleanest beach. A nice 2.5 km walk down it to the end and then another 2.5 km walk back and I was ready for some food... and water. I ate at this cafe on the Strand with a beautiful view of Magnetic Island, home of my sister Kathryn. After lunch and a shower I boarded the ferry to "Maggie". And then walked 3km, with my pack on!, to Kathryn's work.

I climbed that!... in sandals!

From the top to the bottom!

Townsville with 'Maggie' in the distance!

And the river shall run... pink?!?!?

Some pics

Some photos from Port Douglas. I wanted to put up more but this cafe sucks!

Port Douglas Part 2

So I write this in Cairns, having just finished my time in Port Douglas. After Diving the Reef I went out Thursday night to PD's only nightclub Fluid. Appearantly some big UK dj was spinning so pretty much every young'un like myself was there. Partyied hard with some German, Irish, UK and american people from my hostel till 3am. So drunk that I passed out and wake up to the couple in the bunk below getting it on. For my last day in PD I went to the Nature Habitat, which was SO MUCH cooler than the Zoo in Sydney. I had birds flying all around me and some big one flapping his wings at me, telling me this was his territory. It was pretty funny actually, I was tempted to push him off the railing. The Kanagaroos and Wallabes were so cool. I sat there crouching and had this one wallabee come right up into my lap. The german girls (WHAT'S WITH ALL THE GERMANS?!?!? Not that I'm complaning ;)! ) behind me were loving it! After that I went back to the beach and worked on my tan! Watched the rugby with the guys at the hostel and then passed out.

I'm in Cairns now, which is pretty much a snooze-fest. For a relatively big town that boast tourism it has shit all to do! Maybe tonight will be better. No pictures this time... this place is too basic for that!

Great Barrier Reef!

Day two! Up and on the boat @ 8am (groan) after a second shitty night's sleep. I don't know what it is about this place but I seem to have the wierdest dreams. Last night's could've made me millions as a horror/trippy suspense film if only I could remember the details now. ANYWAYS, after a two hour ride in a huge catamataran we got to our 1st dive site. I ended up getting the div supervisor of the boat as my guide for the first one; Dude looks EXACTLY like Hugh Laurie aka House for tv, so much so that EVERY day someone mentions it. After the first minute of "Oh Crap! I'm breathing underwater" hyperness, I got used to it and let me tell you they don't call the Great Barrier Reef one of the 7 wonders of the World for nothing. The place is BEAUTIFUL. So Colourful, so many fish! At the first site, besides the normal little fish we also saw a stingray and a reef shark. Now I thought I'd piss myself when I saw a shark but I wanted to chase this one. So excited. Granted he was only the size of my leg but still a shark none the less! The second site was more colourful than the first and the third was crazy! as soon as you got off the boat into the water you were swarmed by little fish like Nemo and Bubbles and they would start nibbling at your dead skin! A weird feeling and they loved my knees with the scrapes from tennis. there was also this HUGE (IE almost as big as me) fish that our guide fed a little bit and a foot away from my face. It was sweet! My only regret was that I didn't have my own camera so I had to buy the Professional Guy's photos.

It was 8am and this guys shoving a camera in my face?!?!?

The Bare-chest Look

AWESOME!!

Port Doulgas Part1

I'm here! I got in late last night after a pretty uneventful flight. Though I got board the plane from the tarmac, which was cool. Port Douglas is pretty small (I walked the entire town today) but it seems pretty chill, which is a great way for me to start my relaxation!!! It was pretty couldy but that didn't stop me from spending some quality time on the beach. I wanted to go kite-surfing but it was $200 so I said nuts to that. Besides I watched a guy struggle for half an hour as everytime he got standing the wind would shift or something and he would fall back over. Like I said... nuts to that! Tomorrow I hit up the Great Barrier Reef... The King style! here's some pics from day one of The King's Quest!

Staying longer!

As I madly stramble to get packed and ready to go, I just thought I 'd let everyone know that I changed my visa and tentatively rescheduled my ticket home to October 30th! Which gives just over two weeks more fun time! So now I don't have to cut too many corners. I can go to Fraser Island, I can rest at Noosa and I can party my ass off in Surfer's Paradise during the Indy Carnival!!! Anyways, I've got to pack up my computer so this is my last post until I'm on the road!!!

Goodbye Party!

Madness! Last night, Turbo's party/BBQ was awesome! A great way to wrap up the project and say goodbye to everyone! Thanks Jon and Becs for hosting it and getting EVERYTHING! Shout outs to Miles for manning the grill, Magali for playing with fire, Ken and his band for laying it down and Pickard for having a secret stash of brew! Here's some pics:

Gael being... well... Gael - The Boys! Gonna miss you lot!

If this doesn't scream PhotoChop I don't know what does!

Ditto for Pabs!

Magali doing her thing! - The host with the most!

Sam and I - Me fooling around with the exposure settings!

Rachel, Dylon and Amanda - George banging on the drums all day!

Unsuspecting Leiutenants in The King's army! (bottlecapped!):

Pickard! Pabs!

Mikey! Sarah!

Gael!

Pardon the Interuption

We interupt this recap session to bring you pics of the good times had at Jeremy Messana's 30th Birthday Party! I can't believe how many people crammed into that small apartment! And he only had to pay for HALF of them to come!!!! haha I kid! Drunkest of the evening award goes to George, closely followed by the chick who wanted to take me home. Luckily for me... I wasn't THAT drunk! I'm not going to go home with a girl I don't even know and is waaayyyy too drunk just because someone told me to. That's not how I roll! I have standards people!!!! Though I did let her believe that I would, just to get her out of Jeremy's and into a cab. You're welcome Jeremy!
ps. Jeremy has a pic of me and him arguing on whether I have to deal with her. I'll upload it when I get it. CLASSIC. me doing the "No way, no chance in hell" throat slash... Anyways! Here's some pics!

previously mentioned pic! my veins are gross.. it's a gift.

Lawson and Bucket getting down

George and I... um... dude's drunk. I don't know what my excuse is.

what a handsome devil! or a twat! one of the two...

Ummmm. Ok so I was a little drunk Vive la Fance!


Me and Lawson

April.

April.

April was my favorite month. Not to hate on the other months (even if some have bore more fruit ;) ) but April was crazy! So busy doing something EVERY chance I could get! It started the way March ended, in Melbourne! There is nothing like the sound of an F1 car driving by you at nearly top speed. I've been to racing events since I was a little kid and I've never felt the need to wear earplugs... tainted the experience for me... but one car was all it took to convert me! the power of those beautiful machines is AWESOME! the weekend was amazing! sipping Port in a tent, walking and goofing around on the track after the race, partying in the bars on Brunswick St., hanging out with one of my best buds in the world at a time when I needed a friendly face... so great! Of course, I wouldn't be me without having an incident: on race day, my pass fell out of my pocket either getting into or out of a taxi. One massive panic attack later and having to drag Danny out of his bed to come down and help me sort out getting a replacement ticket, we were there sitting in our seats; me much relieved and Danny with a smug-I-told-you-everything-would-be-fine look on his face!
The next weekend I went away on a surfing trip down the coast with some mates from work: Pabs, Brendan, Silke, Enrique and Rafe. BEAUTIFUL place, Jervis Bay. Unfortunately, the seas had surged for the weekend making the place we originally wanted to go too big for us. But after some searching we found a perfect stretch of beach for us to 'hang ten'. Even though I'm relatively shit at it (I can stand but that's aboot it) I LOVE surfing! I'm not hardcore aboot it like the 6am'ers but it's so exhilirating. On the ride home we came across the cliffs of Genoa, just as the sun was going down. The reason we pulled over was that the size of the waves were so massive, we were just in awe. No picture, though I took many, could acurately represent how big they were.
What do you do for Easter weekend in Sydney? Go to the Easter Show rodeo, of course! My best mate here, Rosie, and I took it in and had a "brilliant", as she would say, time. Rodeo, Mottocross, Car tricks, log chopping, farm animals galore and a Kangaroo burger!! What more could you ask for? Though I think Rosie would advise you to stay away from the Croc sausage, or Croc-dog as I like to call it!
To finish the month off I would begin my love affair with horseback riding... and my hatred for chafing!






Brendan, not me... He's Scottish... go figure...