My holiday with the promising tag springbreak ended up not completely as expected, but I still had a blast. With Lisa and Karina I took a train to Brisbane, where we arrived at 6.30 in the morning. After dropping our bags at the hostel we decided to explore the city. Queensland calls itself the sunshine state, but ironically it was very warm, but most certainly cloudy there while I am pretty sure we left sunshine in Sydney. The city was still asleep but even later in the afternoon there were not that many people around. I concluded Brisbane, despite its pretty parks and buildings, felt like a city without a soul. We walked around the Brisbane river, saw the story bridge, went to the museum (to discover that every Australian artist went to Paris at some point in their lives), walked some more along the river and Brisbane's CBD. As someone who lists ' sleeping in' as a hobby I all of a sudden discovered that a day had a lot of hours and in one day we walked through the entire of Brisbane. After a quick bite at the hostel we went for a drink at the groove train in Brisbane's squire and discovered that Brisbane is a lot prettier by night. On the squire stood the festival terrain where the last events of the Brisbane festival were taking place. We were almost falling asleep after such a long day but we waited for the Dj event to start and I'm glad we did. The DJ was amazing but more astonishing was the inside of the festival tent which felt like I walked into a circus.
The next day we went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and to my delight it was actually sunny. Iguanas and bush turkeys randomly rand around in the park I saw countless of koalas, although my favourite was the kindergarten with mummies and their joey's (koalababies). In another part of the park we could feed kangaroos in the large open area where they just hopped around. I also fed an emu, but these big birds are quite scary to feed in comparions to the sweet skippies. After a Sunday Roast at the pub we went to stroll next to the river again with some ice cream and decided that the story bridge did look nice lit up at night and maybe wasn't just a cheap knock off of the Harbour Bridge.The next morning my alarm went at 4.45 because we thought the only bus to Surfer's Paradise was at 7. T
his turned out not to be true, but it did mean we were already enjoying the beach and clear blue skies at eight in the morning. Don't let the name fool you, Sufer's paradise is a beach that seems under continuous construction with skyscrapers looming over you. Still, sandy beaches and a nice swim in the sea are hard to spoil (even though I managed to burn my eyelids (!) and looked as if wearing pink eyeshadow for the rest of the week. That night we went out to Vanity, which meant waitresses in lingerie, but also the coolest bathroom I have ever seen. Lollies, perfume bottles, gold and chandeliers everywhere. I also surprisingly met some friends who I thought wouldn't arrive till later and met the brother in law of a friend of mine back in Rotterdam. Something about the world is small?After just a day in Surfer's we moved on to Byron Bay which can best be described as hippy town. May Karma be with you, peace out and safe the environment can be read everywhere and apparently they forced out MacDonalds out of their town.The beach is amazing, but we were only able to enjoy it the second day we were there. At the beach I spotted a whale in the distance and at that moment I felt truly on holiday.In the afternoon I went surfing for the first time and I surprisingly turned out to be a decent surfer. I was able to stand up most of the time and there was even a dolphin swimming close to us. Byron Bay's nightlife is not the greatest with just a few bars, most of them the wet t-shirt competition kind (I swear, you'd think some of those blokes have never seen boobs before). The third day it sadly was cloudy again so we just strolled around the shop, met some other friends in the supermarket and had dinner together. We ended up build
ing our own party in an almost deserted bar with quite some people we met in the hostel. We went surfing a second time with some higher waves this time. I had a blast once more and felt I found a sport a quite enjoyed, with a typical instructor with long blonde hair yelling 'Feel the wave Holland!'. In the afternoon we walked to the famous lighthouse and stood at the most easterly point of Australia and saw a lot of whales. With the wind in my hair staring over the enormous ocean with grey fins bobbing up and down I felt genuinly on top of the world.Unfortunately that was about it as we ended with a massive anti-climax. The day and a half we were to spend in Coffs Harbour I can only say I saw my first James Bond. We only had rain and the only thing I saw of the banana worshipping town is the big banana when we rode by it in the bus and the cafe we ate chocolate cake to cheer ourselves up.
In the end it was not the sunshine filled break I had hoped for but I still enjoyed my first trip outside of Sydney. I still can't wait for the day I can go to Bondi in bikini, which should come soon. Of course there are a lot of good days but the weather behaves a bit like a moody teenager. Sometimes you feel as if you are in the Bahamas while the next day I feel as if I'm back in the Netherlands. Three months have passed in a blur and Springbreak is oficially over. Four weeks of class left and still so much to discover!
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