throwin the book at you.

so this past week has been quite the gong show i must admit, a very fun one but a gongshow none the less. i think the last thing i wrote about was the whitsundays sailing. after airlie beach we hopped on the oz bus down to kroombit which is more of a natinoal park/farm than a town, actually where we stayed it was just a ranch designed for our group specifically. we are so bad at booking our busses that i think on every occasion we have either only booked in one person on the bus (as i don't have darcy's ID, booked us like an hour before the bus leaves, or just not booked at all and asked the driver that morning if he has room. oh well, its all part of us making plans as we go, lately we have also been making plans that align with the group we've hung out with quite a bit lately, you'll probably see them a few times in the facebook pictures. i swear that by the time we get to sydney we'll just be one big group of southgoers. we leap frog eachother all the time but seem to always meet up. pretty sweet. anyways the cattle station was a blast despite it pouring rain for an hour or so in the middle of the evening. the highlight of the night of course was the bull riding, during my Sea to Sea tour i didn't dare as i didn't want to injure myself. so i kind of had a chance at the ranch, althouh i admit it was a lot easier than a real bull. I judge that from the fact that i was able to ride the bull backwards, spin my self around and then surf on it for a couple seconds. doubt the boys on the real bull would have tried that, although it was pretty hilarious to see most people get thrown forward off the bull on the first buck. there should be a good fb picture of a couple of them. we tried to get a couple drinkin games going but no one was really into it so it ended up being an early, night. fine enough as the next day we had a little mini rodeo with goats, team Canada (ie darcy and i) plus one got second. we had to lassoo a goat, flip it on its side and brand it for 3 seconds (fake branding...too bad) anyway it seems i've been second a lot lately, we also stopped during our bus ride at this lawn bowls club and tried our hand at it, was a good time again, and i was second closest behind tom so i just lost the $25 prize pot. oh well me and darcy got a free nights accomadation once when the receptionist in airlie beach thought we had already paid for our night. sweet. although now i'm gonna need another three of those breaks to make up for the $100 cash i just lost yesterday...woot. i almost lost our camera the other day when i left it somewhere. thankfully someone was honest an returned it to the front desk.
the language barrier can be pretty confusing at times, it seems all of england comes to australia at some point in their life as that's all we've met basically, plus a couple swedes. one day we were discussing what to make for supper and darcy and i suggested our past meal of pasta and hamburger with pasta sauce. they thought it was the most outrageous idea and made fun of it for a good five mintues. it wasn't until we figured out they thought actual patties with pasta that there was a misreading. they call it mince meat, makes sense but hamburger works too i think, anyway that night we just had pizza instead as it was all you could eat dominoes for $10 at our hostel, including drinks, i think i've had pizza about 7 times in the last week and a half, its just always such a good deal.
anyway so now onto our gong show of a fraser island trip. at six am we were up for our safety briefing where like every other safety movie, we killed ourselves laughing at the video. the highlight was "in case of a dingo, back away, then attack aggresively! we joked about that all weekend. after that it was time to go grocery shopping with our group of 10 for 3 days. actually went well considering we didn't really know each other too well and had to cooperate and shop together. we spent $20each for 3 days so we did well, one group spent $350 for 8 ppl. crazy. once we got to the island, i had the brainy idea of volunteering to drive first, it was a pretty steep learning curve i tell yah. i was smokin tires on the first boarded section and got us stuck a few times. to my credit though everyone got stuck as this was serious 4X4. they said i was a good driver so that's comforting. in the end i was glad i went first. it was so much fun and now i want to buy a hard core jeep so i can do it again in canada. our group gelled so well together that we ended up even getting irritated when the other 3 groups of 8-10 joined us at camp that night. terrible i know. as per the pictures you'll see there were so many cool sights on the island, at lake wabby we found a sweet dune with a steep slope down to a cool freshwater lake, we ran down, cartwheeled and even body boarding down the sand, flying into the water. so much fun. setting up camp was a gongshow too as we had a rain scare with a half hour shower so we were all running around trying to figure out tarps, tents, stoves, etc. it worked well though as everybody kind of took over certain areas and we were setup pretty quick. one of the guys, matt, took over the bbq and we had a awesome supper of smokies to start, bbq chicken skewers to follow, then hamburgers to finish it off, we didn't realize we bought so much. ate it all though. everything had a bit of a crunch to it though as you literally cannot help but getting sand in absolutely everything and everywhere. after dinner we chilled out over some beers and goon (baically any wine that comes in a bag or box, usually very cheap) because it get so dark out so quick we still ended up in bed before midnight, once again our drinking games were ruined because of the other groups joining our party (we did have a pretty happenin camp.)
the next morning we were up early and took down camp, we ended up sitting around for a couple hours though as a few had to go with the vehicle and get more water for us. our time was further lost as we got stopped by the cops at a check stop and they took like 45 mintues to get everything figured out there. after that it we rushed through everything but it was still amazing. we went to indian head lookout where you could go on dangerous cliffs n such, then off to champagne pools which are natural pools filled by the high tides. like swimming in a natural aquarium. then a quick stop at a huge ship wreck before rushing back to beat the other three groups back to our awesome camp site. its is such a sweet feeling to cruise at like 70km/hr down a sand beach, passing fishers, and basically making the lanes wherever the water washes up. oh yah and i had to be reminded to stay on the left when i drove as there aren't any markers obvi. on the way back to camp we got pulled over again and got fined for no one wearing their seatbelts, stupid cops just pull over the young guns, w/e we only got one fine between the 10 of us so we all payed 10% of it. for the second time we set up camp we were pros and ended up having dinner done by like 6pm, so naturally we popped the beers a little earlier. this night we just hung out on our own and had a blast just goofin around and listening to music. in bed again early.
the final day we packed up, i was the monkey who had get up in the top of the camper and put the tents and stuff in the back. sweat like a pig up there, had a waterfall off my back when i got out. so we did the same water routine but found out that there was a water location like 10 mintues away this whole time, saved an hour and a half. i drove again this morning which was awesome again. we started heading back to the terminal but got stuck behind some piddly SUV (i think it was a ford or some local brand) who was stuck, we had to dig and push him out as he was beached and had crap tires, he didn't even help himself or dig and didn't even say thands afterwards, w/e guess old people just think young people are at their disposal ;) (i don't actually mean that) anyway so then we went up to lake mckenzie for a quick dip which was also amazing, met a couple of our fellow bus goers there too. after that, a quick SANDwhich (man i'm funny) and then back to the terminal to go back to the mainland. all in all the trip was amazing and probably even beat the sailin trip.
now it's time to take few days here in noosa and surf, also gonna have to figure out how long we stay here. we might end up chillin for a while here to recover from how much has been gonig on. the YHA here is really nice but also very expensive. this morning we had our first bacon and eggs breakfast on the trip, nice fat bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, hash browns, baked beans and tomato. we're so screwed for money that we'll just deal with it when the time comes. could be washin dishes...woot...anyway this has been a book and had a publishing cost of about $10 so i hope its a best seller. i know the half of you won't even get to this line but for those who actually care i figured i owed you one. Enjoy.