A while back, I changed over my Flickr account to a new account due to a security issue. As a result, most of my pics from blog entries pre-2010 (Including most of my Africa shots) have been removed. Please hang with me and I’ll try and re-upload them as soon as I can.
Happy readings!
Dealbh80
Stayed: Cape Byron YHA ($31 pppn)
I was woken up this morning at 7am, by the skydiving company to say that this mornings 8am pickup was cancelled due to the weather, however the forecast for the day was expected to clear up by lunchtime. Being ever the optimist, I decided to get ready and have a cup of coffee. An 8am, 9am, 10am and 11am phonecall from the sky diving company unfortunately said that it was still postponed. At around 11:30am, they phoned again with some good news – the runway was back open at they would come and pick me up! I drank up my coffee and waited excitedly!
The runway was about a 15 minute ride inland, which is possibly the longest 15 minutes of my life! All I could think about was plane, runway, take-off, high-up, clouds, door open, out & plummeting to my death! Terrifying but exciting! In my head, I just kept saying to myself “DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT”!!
The skydive place was just next to the runway and the staff seemed pretty friendly, helpful and welcoming which is always good when you’re about to leap out of an aircraft at 14,000ft! I joked with the staff if a parachute was provided, or if I had to bring my own. They looked like they’d heard that one a thousand times before. Oh well, I just wanted to make sure.
After filling out some basic safety paperwork, it was time to put on the harness and go over some basic information about what we had to do. Apparently you have to slide sideways over to the open door, grab your harness with both hands, look straight up with your back curved and fold your legs underneath the outside of the aircraft! Right, sounds easy!
My group of about 8 people proceeded to board the aircraft, and we took off into the (only time I’d seen) blue sky. (in a week). The aircraft was a small purpose built Cessna with single propeller. There wasn’t a great deal of room inside, and I think that’s the first time I’ve been on a plane without seat belts. After about 10 mins, we were just above cloud level, and this was only 7,000ft – we were only halfway up! I could see the sea, beach, byron bay and lighthouse down beneath getting smaller and smaller as we climbed steadily.
The instructor whom I was jumping with, fastened my harness to his and filmed my thoughts on what we were about to do. As I had my glasses on, I had a special pair of safety goggles to go over them. My nerves were getting really intense now, but the more nervous I was, the louder I said to myself “DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT”.
After about a 20 minute flight (What felt like forever), with none of the usual coffee, sandwiches, inflight entertainment – the door opened and it was time to go! I was the 3rd person in the queue near the door, so I watched the 2 people in front of me go. Then, it was my turn! I shuffled forwards to the gaping open door into the bright sunshine, with the instructor in tow attached to my harness. Holding on to the handrail at the side of the door precariously and looking straight forward (not down, definitely not down), I swung my legs out and underneath the plane, let go of the rail and held on to my harness. The wind was whipping at my legs and blowing past my face. I had a quick look outside and down – everything looked so small and I could see the waves and ground far beneath. The instructor told me to lift my head up, so staring straight up at the ceiling of the plane, I knew it was imminent. With a big gasp and a smile for the camera, we fell out of the plane and into the open air!
It’s difficult to accurately describe the thoughts, sights and emotions that were running through my mind at that point – but there was this sudden rush of everything all at once. It was overwhelming. I thought I blacked out for a second, but I think it was just a headrush! The feeling of falling at great speed, tumbling around in the air, seeing the aircraft from beneath getting further and further away, the view far beneath, the wind punishing my face and the clouds below getting ever closer. This was truely an amazing feeling and experience. I couldn’t stop myself cheering or yelling!
From leaping out, the instructor and I spun around about two or three times before levelling out horizontally. I felt all dizzy and light headed at first, but after a moment I could see everything below and infront – the view was spectacular free-falling towards Byron bay. You could see the beach, sea and coast starting to get larger and larger. We had about 60 seconds of free-fall, before the instructor deployed the parachute. Up until this point, I had my arms outstretched feeling the wind blowing through my fingers – pretending I was superman and flapping my arms in a vain attempt to fly.
The chute-open wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, barely noticing anything – but the harness I was in started to bite into my legs. We spun around and around towards the runway landing site where we had started. Passing through the clouds was an interesting experience – briefly feeling damp but going straight through it at speed. Beneath, I could see two other parachutes from the previous jumpers spinning around and around.
The entire descent lasted about 5 minutes, and was like nothing else you will ever experience. It was so hard to take it all in, the surroundings and of having nothing above, below, in front of or around you and seeing the world laid out like a real life living breathing map. The cars and lorries moving, waves crashing into the beach, and clouds moving all in slow-motion.
Suddenly, out of nowhere the ground just came rushing up catching me a little off guard. The instructor told me to lift my legs and feet up as we came into land, but this was the only point I felt a little worried. It was like falling, seeing the ground and then suddenly the blades of grass rushing towards me. Incredible! And we were down. I just sat on the grass for a minute laughing hysterically and happily out loud.
Overcome with adrenaline, nerves and enjoyment, I picked up my photos & DVD of the footage and headed back into Byron Bay for some much needed beer!
Dealbh80
Stayed: Cape Byron YHA ($31 pppn 10 bed male/female dorm)
Today is my Birthday! Many happy returns Stu! Last nights party turned into a bit of a session, and I didn’t get home until around 5am (It was daylight). My bus was at 8am so I literally just had 2hrs sleep before having to get up to catch the Greyhound to Byron Bay. Needless to say, it was indeed a big night and I was feeling decidedly queasy today.
Bus journeys and birthday hangovers do not bode well. Unfortunately, it was still raining really heavily. Given my headache, I secretly hope that it would be called off until tomorrow
Byron bay is in New South Wales (NSW), so there was a 1hr time difference between Surfers Paradise and Byron.. NSW is 1hr ahead of Queensland.
Fortunately, I did manage to survive the journey and arrived in plenty of time for my skydive. However around midday, I got the phonecall I was expecting from the Skydive company to say that todays jump had been called off. Bummer! Oh well, at least I could go back to bed and catch up on last night’s missed sleep. I wasn’t missing much apart from the torrential rain.
Highlight of the day: A friend recommended a kebab shop called ‘Bay Kebabs’. This was situated about 3 mins from the beach, and indeed they do delicious kebabs. Thank you for a great recommendation 
Dealbh80
Today, I booked the Cape Byron YHA and Greyhound bus for tomorrow morning (8:20am). I’m quite keen to get there as early as possible due to my 2:30pm sky dive. There is more rain due for the next few days so I’m a little worried it’ll get cancelled.
Today was nothing special as it was still raining pretty heavy. Feeling a bit down as it’s miserable outside – clearly the great outdoors isn’t much fun when it’s p**sing it down with rain.
As it’s my 31st Birthday at midnight tonight, myself and my room mates are participating in the Surfers Paradise ‘Big Night Out’. This involves a theme (lai’s and glo-sticks) and a club crawl around 4 clubs. I think it’s going to be a long night…. Have to be careful not to get too drunk tonight as a hungover skydive won’t be much fun….
Dealbh80
This morning I got up at 7:30am to go for breakfast with some of the people I’d been sharing a room with last night. There was an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet place down on the beach front for $14. Getting up today, I was dismayed to see overcast grey skies. Checking the weather app on my iPhone, the weather for the next few days didn’t look particularly pleasing.. Heavy rain and weather warnings (20-36mm of rain each day). This is what I feared – awful weather for my birthday week!
So with a humungous breakfast, the rain came on and I headed back to the hostel. I was feeling a bit sleepy, so decided to have a nap for a few hours. When I woke up, it was still raining! I think today was going to be a bit of a washout, so I decided to book my birthday surprise!
For a while now, I thought the idea of skydiving was the ultimate in adrenaline rushes. Jumping out of an aircraft above the clouds, plummeting towards the ground at 140mph hoping that the parachute would open and then the ground getting closer and closer until you landed on the ground! Imagine the excitement and buzz that you would get when you landed, taking in all that you had just seen and experienced. I’ve been considering it for a while, and for the last couple of weeks, I’d just been putting it off and putting it off. Today, with my birthday only 2 days away – I booked it! The place was to be Byron bay (Apparently the 2nd best place in Australia to do it after Mission Beach), and I went all out at 14,000ft and a video / photos to prove that I did it too!!! Expensive though at $500 AUD with Australia Skydive but hopefully worth it – what a way to spend a 31st birthday….
Time for a visit to the bottle shop I think. There’s a night out at the Surfers Paradise club ‘Beer Garden’ tonight, so I think I’ll attend. Can’t be any more miserable than sitting in my room with the pouring rain out there. God, it’s torrential!!
Dealbh80
Stayed: Surfers Paradise Backpackers Resort ($28 pppn)
Today, my friends and I decided to take it easy after yesterday’s seasickness. We had planned Sea Kayaking at Point Lookout, however it was raining non-stop over night and was set to be generally quite wet and damp today. We all just stayed in bed and slept through (and heard) the rain.
For breakfast/lunch/brunch, myself and Anett went to the Straddie Roadhouse next door to the hostel and had some burgers and fries.. mmmmm
Around 1:50pm, we caught the Island bus back to the ferry terminal – and then the ferry back to Cleveland. 
Arrival into Brisbane was around 4:20pm after experiencing a few delays and setbacks along the way. I was in a bit of a rush, as I’d left some stuff back at Aussie Way Backpackers hostel that I needed to ship back to the UK, and the post office’s all shut at 5pm. Luckily I made it (Thanks to a rather generous lift from the Hostel manager) with 5 minutes to spare, and this made my trip down to Surfers Paradise much easier and lighter with weight.
I said my final goodbye’s to my friends at the hostel, picked up my bags and headed down towards the bus station. Boarding the 7pm Greyhound bus, I said goodbye to Brisbane.
The Greyhound journey down only took an hour, however it rained the whole way down. Surfers Paradise Transit centre was already closed by the time I arrived, so the backpackers information desk was closed. I decided to phone the hostel to see what the best way to get there was. The hostel-world website booking I made, said that they had a courtesy bus so I thought I’d make full use of this! Phew, they came to pick me up and took me straight to the hostel (SP isn’t a big place to literally only took less than 5 mins)
I arrived at the Surfers Paradise Backpackers resort just south of the main Surfers paradise beach area. Arriving quite late, reception was already closed and I had to check in at the bar. Immediately, it was apparent I’d booked in to a ‘Party Hostel’. I shuddered in the sudden realisation that I probably wasn’t going to get much sleep over the next few days. The heavy rain upon arrival also meant that I wouldn’t get much beach time either.
Luckily, my room mates seemed nice. There was a girl from Scotland, a girl from the USA, a Dutch girl and another guy from Northern Ireland. We had a bit of chat in the room, until late and then had an early night! What will tomorrow bring?!
Dealbh80
Today was a nice slow start, getting up at 9am and editing a couple of pictures, emails, etc.. I’d had a good day of shooting pictures yesterday, so I was keep to get Lightroom open and fiddle around with the results
Just after Lunch was my Scuba dive! As the weather was quite nice, today looked quite promising! This was my first dive in nearly 6 months so I was eager to get back into the water. Setting up the equipment was a bit of a struggle though, but I eventually managed to remember where the regulator fitted to the Buoyancy Control Device (BCD).
A short and slightly choppy trip out into the bay onboard a RIB speedboat, we arrived at some rocks that went about 6-20 metres under the water. We were promised some Manta Rays (Apparently the morning scuba dive, they saw 14 of them) and sea turtles. My instructor today was a guy called ‘Biddy’, and our group size was only 4 people (Though there were 12 more experienced divers on the boat).
Leaving Anett and Nichole behind to do their snorkelling, I dived off the side of the boat and into the water. The coldness bit a bit at first – in contrast to the warm waters in Thailand. However the wetsuit soon warmed up and it was actually quite pleasant. Under water, the visibility was about average – maybe about 7-10 meters – and we descended deep in to the darkening water.
After about 10 minutes of swimming around underwater, I found my first big surprise… a gigantic gold and white spotted Tiger shark! It lay sleeping at the bottom of the sea bed, half covered in Sand. Swimming right over it, it lay there unbothered by our presence – it’s 5 gills moving slowly back and forth breathing in and out. I could feel my own heart start to race in excitement, awe and amazement of this 2-3 meter long beauty! This was already terrific. A short while later, we spotted some more Tiger sharks (Maybe another 7 or 8) before spotting a moving ‘square’ shape in the distance. Unfortunately, it was too far away to see it properly but this was our first manta ray spot!
Luckily though, it wasn’t too long before I got my first closeup encounter of a manta ray behind some rocks. The thing was ginormous!! Easily 2-3 meters wide with a foot wide mouth. It was as fascinated with us as we were with it. It swam to the side of us, behind us and then infront of us studying us the whole time, maybe to as close as 1 meter away. My respect for this creature grew due to the size of it, and with a moments heartbeat – it had disappeared off into the murky blue water and was gone. However it did leave a big smile across mine and the groups faces – we had all seen what we had came to see!
With my air growing low, it was time to return to the surface and tell the rest of the group what we had seen.
Unfortunately, when we resurfaced Anett and Nichole weren’t feeling so great. The rough seas had caused them to feel seasick and the were feeling poorly back on the boat. They had however also seen some Manta Rays while snorkelling in the water earlier. I guess right now wasn’t the time for stories.
Before you do a second dive, you have to stay at the surface for a period of time depending how deep you dived, for how long and how deep your next dive will be and for how long – this is called Surface Interval (SI) and is typically around an hour to an hour and a half. This is a safety thing to prevent dangerous levels of Nitrogen building up in your blood stream causing decompression sickness. We killed time eating candy snakes and drinking hot tomato soup and discussing each others first dive. My two seasick friends though were suffering really badly though, and I felt so sorry for them 
Poor things.
With a surface interval of about an hour, it was back in the water at the same site to see if we could spot some turtles. However, this dive was nowhere near as exciting as the first and we didn’t see nearly as much as the first dive. No sharks, no manta rays and no turtles either. Before we got in the water, there were some black clouds on the horizon so I wonder if they sensed an incoming storm and went off to deeper waters.
After only 30 minutes, my air had run out and I resurfaced. It was time to head back to shore. Thankfully, the first dive had been so amazing and made up for the second one being so poor.
Time for some food, beers and chilling out on the beach tonight – to the delight of Anett and Nichole who were loving being back on dry land. I was a bit worried about the clouds though.
Dealbh80
After sitting out on the beach last night until 2am (Watching shooting stars under the clear night sky) drinking beer, I decided to have a bit of a lie in today until my friends arrived on the island. I awoke to find that my room mates had headed out for the day which was fine, as I got to sleep on for a bit longer. Anett and Nicole turned up about midday, so we headed out to the next door Stradbroke Roadhouse for some burgers. These were reasonably priced at about $10 AUD a burger and $3 for a large cup of chips – although don’t come here if you expect to find anything healthy – there was no doubt that this was a grease-fest! Already, the sunshine was amazing and it was really hot!
In the afternoon, after some food – the three of us headed back to the hostel to put on our swimwear and get ready to head out for the afternoon. Walking past the hostel reception, we went in to investigate what activities they offered. Within about 5 minutes, I’d booked an afternoons Scuba diving around Stradbroke Island ($150 + $46 equipment hire) and the two girls had booked in some snorkelling. This truly was going to be a great weekend
We went to explore around Point Lookout – walking up along the road from the Manta YHA Hostel towards the east coast of the island. First place to visit was Frenchman’s beach (Named after four frenchmen who discovered it about 150 years ago), famed for dolphin, turtle and whale spotting. The girls wanted to do a bit of sunbathing and swimming here, so I went off to try and find interesting things to photograph.
It’s not past whale season so we were on the lookout for dolphins… Unfortunately, there were none to see today – but we did get the fright of our lives sitting at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea! Hearing a noise behind us, we were expecting to see someone walking behind us. You can imagine the surprised look on our faces when this huge kangaroo went bounding past us at speed, disappearing off into the trees and wild bush surrounding the cliffs. That was a bit of an unexpected surprise!
The next port of call was the ravine walk around the point lookout headland. This was a short stretch of coastal walk, that took the avid explorer around some particularly nice scenery, cliffs and views. Definitely worth a visit and a beautiful and dramatic part of Australia.
Back to the hostel again, and it was off to the beach after dark for some more beers and shooting star spotting with Anett and Nichole!
Dealbh80
Stayed: Manta YHA ($33 pppn / $28 pppn with YHA Card)
After four Months of working and living in Brisbane, I decided that today was going to be my last day, and I would start the rest of my trip around Australia. Some friends and I wanted to visit Stradbroke Island this weekend, so today seemed like the perfect time to go and visit. I went in to work this morning for the last time, and was due to finish up there at about 1pm.
The morning went past relatively slowly, and at 1:15pm I said my goodbyes and left work for the last time. I felt very sad just walking away from a job I’d been doing for the last four months. It was straight onto the bus, back to the hostel to pick up my things – and then off to Roma street train station in Brisbane.
To get to Stradbroke Island, you have to catch a ferry from the town of Cleveland – this is about an hour south of Brisbane. The train wasn’t too expensive (About $3), and got me there for about 5pm. From the train station in Cleveland, there is another connecting bus you have to catch down to the ferry terminal – just ask for the sea cat to Stradbroke.
The Sea Cat is $19 AUD for a return, while you can reduce this down to $15 if you are a student or have a ‘VIP card’. A little more expensive that I’d anticipated, so this went straight on to my debit card.
The ferry journey was a bit choppy, with high sea swells causing the boat to bob up and down quite significantly. Fortunately, I’m a hardened traveller though so I didn’t feel any ill effects or sea sickness! The crossing was also pretty short, and only took about 30 mins to get to port Dunwich on the Island.
On arrival, the island bus was sitting waiting to pick up passengers to take around the island. Point to note is that the Island bus doesn’t take Queenslands ‘Go Cards’ so you will have to pay cash on the bus. The fare is $4.60 AUD to the Manta YHA.
Checked in to the Manta YHA successfully, a quick shower later and it was off out to find a bottle shop and explore point lookout. I wanted to sit out on the beach, watching the stars and having a nice cold beer – the way all holidays should be spent!!
Dealbh80
So today marks the official start of my last full week on Brisbane and I still haven’t figured out what I want to do and where I want to go. The options are, to bus, train, backpack and fly around Australia – and just stay in hostels, maybe renting the occasional van/car for week trips to go and see things. Unfortunately, car and van rental in Australia is very expensive so I would run out of money quite quickly.
The other option is to buy a car / van for the next few months and sell it when I leave Australia… This has advantages in that
So from that summary, I really need to pull my finger outta my ass and sort out getting a van! I think today will be spent researching places and what to look at…
Dealbh80
