East cost, Australia

Surfers Paradise, Gold Cost

Rainbow beach become our most northern part of our Australian travels this time, since our money situation forced us to head back south to find some kind of work. We had to stand by the road and wait for a ride for about 20 minutes this time, which is the longest we ever had to wait. Also because there's not really anyone driving past Rainbow. Anyhow, this lovely mid age lady finally gave us a ride down the cost. After about 2,5 hours we got dropped us at a service station about an hour north of Brisbane. By that time we got there we met the same person who gave us a lift from Noosa to Rainbow. Turned out that he's together with his son is heading to the south of Brisbane and offered us a ride, for the second time. Since he was driving a youth, We all had to fit in the front seat together with he's sons 1 year old python snake. It was a lot of fun with the cutest 10 year old you could imagine, chatting the ride away teaching us about snakes and surfing. After a few other shorter lifts we got ourselves to Surfers paradise where we checked into a hostel for the night. Unfortunately, it turned out that Stina been running  out of money. We went to get some out from her Swedish savings account to put back into the Australian one. Clever as, she put all her money into the ATM without keeping any to use the next couple of days. And since it was Friday evening, before a long Australian holiday weekend, the bank wouldn't be open until Tuesday. That left her with 71 cent on  bank account which had to last her until then. Obviously, you can't go far with that so we both ended up sharing my budget for the next day, which forced us to live cheaper than one can imagine. 

Since Stina never experienced the Surfer's nightlife and we hadn't been out dancing for a while, that was what we aimed for that night. We played a game of pool at our hostel before they kicked us out, and another one at one of the bars before we went out looking for a club where we didn't had to pay entrance. Since we couldn't afford drinks but still wanted to meet people it's a good way to either play pool or go dancing. We ended up quite disgust of the clubs thought with their slinky atmosphere and posh downed-dressed people so we went back home instead. 

Nobby's beach, Gold Cost

We took a local bus from Surfers down to Nobbys beach, where Elis's currently staying with 5 other Australia guys. I met 2 of them while we were in Bali together a couple of months ago. Nobby's was so different from Surfers in every possible way and I do understand how Elis been stuck there for the last 4 months. It's a lot less backpackers, a lot smaller and more easy going people. The wether wasn't too great so we basically spend the day hanging out with Elis housemates, running in between the house and the bar 10 meters down the street. It was great fun meeting Elis again even if the rest of the guys could be a bit hard to socialize with. 

Byron Bay

26th of Januari, known as Australia Day. As usual me and Stina made no specific plans for this day even if we would like to head down from Nobby's to Byron which would be about 2 hours drive. We stood beside the road in Nobby's next to the highway, and got picked up by a sweet aus boy who lived just around the corner but felt like he didn't had anything else to do than giving us a lift down the road. He dropped us of at a service station almost half way to Byron where we met a lovely man, who use to be a hitchhiker himself in Europe back in the 80's. While he was driving us we picked up another hitchhiker, a German girl who was going a little bit further south. 

We checked into the same old campspot hanged around for a while with all the people around before walking in to town. We went back to our favorite bar for a while and met one of our kiwi friends before going dancing. As my sandals hit their last expiring day a few weeks ago, this night was the end for them and I found myself walking out on the street barefoot. Outside the abraKEBABra later that night we met Australian Callen who we started chatting with. Turned out that he was about to drive down south tomorrow, and had two spear seats in he's car. We easily decided to join them for a roadtrip down to Newcastle the next morning. 

Newcastle

While we were waiting for our ride in the morning we spent the hours trying to dig out all glass I got in my foot. Since I ended up beeing barefoot the night before and dark as it was I managed to step on glass on our way home. We sorted it out thought with the help of an English guy from our camp. 

Callen and his 2 friends picked up us in early arvo to start our 8 hour roadtrip down south. The car was packed, with the five of us and all our luggage. Especially mine and Stina's. We spent the hours chatting, singing, listening to way to loud music and all this typical road-trip things. We did a stop in Coffs Harbour to get pictures in front of the giant banana the have there, a touristy attraction. Other than that we tried to drive straight to Newcastle.

 Me and Stina kindly got offered to stay with Callen and his mother who is - exept from my own of cource - one of the most lovely mothers I have ever met. And I'm sure we did a good first impression as well, as she wrote the sweetest update about us on her facebookpage. 

 

 Even if me and Stina wanted to get to Melbourne as fast as possible we decided to stay one day in Newcastle to check it out and to hang out with our friend. Callan had a day off the next day and happily showed us around Newcastle. It reminds me a bit of Canberra with the fact that you'll have to drive everywhere since the city is quite spread out. There wasn't much to see really, but we had a nice day including beach and pool table. Nothing can go wrong there. 

Canberra

Callan dropped us off at a nearby service station on his way to work, around 6.30 in the morning. We got picked up by 26 year old Ian on his way to work at the central cost. Ian wasn't even the slightest motivated to work that morning, and would be at least an hour late already. After we shared our stories, inspired him to travel and make him realize how amazing we are he ended up calling sick that day to hang out with us a couple of more hours. We started off with visiting his father in northern Sydney. Even if Ian's working less than an hour from there, he hadn't been in Sydney for the last year. He claims it too far, while we find a one hour drive as nothing by now. He's father was super nice, funny old man who ended up joining us for a drive to the southern part of Sydney where he bought us lunch before dropping us off at another service station. After a few other drives we ended up with the greatest mid age man on our way to Canberra. We shared all our adventurous hitch hike stories and by the end of the day he got the two of us booked in and paid for in a lovely hotel in Canberra city. The room, the atmosphere, and all the surroundings was amazing, and did not fel like anything that we deserved. We felt a little bad for accepting this wonderful gift even if he never really gave us any choice. 

   As we now did got the loveliest room, just between me and Stina, we stayed in the entire evening taking advantage of our luxury facilities. We obviously had the best sleep ever, before checking out the next morning to continue our travels towards Melbourne.  

Melbourne

The same man as yesterday picked us up outside the hotel he got us booked in to the day before. We couldn't thank him enought when he dropped us off along the highway going between Sydney and Melbourne on his way to work. We ended up sharing rides with around 6 different but wonderful drivers before we finally reached our goal that evening. After 3 weeks of hithhiking, 2464 km, and at least 30 different drivers.  By this point we were extremely exhausted. Fysically and socially and spend our first few days recovering with super early nights and sleep in mornings. Since we've been hitch hiking we have never really been able to sleep during our travels, and we always have to socialize and be talkative. I do believe that we inspired so many people during our way, and learnt so much from others. And we loved and appreciated every single bit of it. We couldn't be more thankful for every single person helping us out, giving us a lift and sharing their stories. This is something I'd look back to and remember as one of my best experiences for the rest of my life. But even if we've had amazing travel experiences from the last few weeks we both felt that it was getting time for something new, the excitement to start the next chapter of our Australian adventures.