Surf Camp!

So Kerry, Claire, Sam and I are all taking the OzExperience bus and travelling up the east coast of Australia, stopping off at various places on the way. My friends travel up to Cairns but I am only travelling two weeks with them up to Fraser Island - basically half way up the east coast, just into Queensland.

Our trip started with a lovely 5.30am start to collect the bus from Sydney...another early start! I seem to be having a lot of them whilst in Australia! Anyway, we caught the bus - basically an extended minibus for 24 people and started travelling up to Surf Camp. After about 9 hours on the bus, with few toilet stops in between! The bus wasn't very luxurious either - pretty crammed with fairly uncomfortable seats..especially after 9 hours on it!!! But we arrived at Surf Camp and were absolutely shattered! We had a quick tour of the complex. It's basically a camp site with a surf school built specifically for travellers. The complex was pretty cool but the accommodation wasn't great. It was basically a cargo freight thing from a ship with 6 beds in it - well a mixture between that and a portacabin. But it was livable and it had a bed so I was happy. As we were so tired we really didn't do much that evening, instead opting for an early night ready for our surf lesson the next morning (Sunday morning).

Another early morning on Sunday - 7am wake up for an 8am surf lesson! We grabbed a quick breakfast, slapped on the sun cream, and met at the surf school for a brief introduction into surf theory, how waves a formed etc. We then had to collect a wet suit - this I was not happy with! They gave me and XL one with "the lazy one" written on it, which I couldn't even get over my shoulders, it was very embarrassing. So I had to go and get a bigger size, this time it was named "the great white"! It was skin tight and really really unattractive...nice huh!? We grabbed the surf boards ("softies") and headed down to the beach to practice how to catch a wave, stand on the board etc. After 10 minutes, a very brief introduction, we were thrown into the deep end (so to speak) and surfed!! My goodness, I did not expect it to be so hard! I was absolutely shit! OK, I wasn't that bad, just not as good as some people. I managed to catch some waves whilst lying on the board which was really fun - it feels like you are going really fast when you're carried by the wave, and incredible feeling. A few times I even managed to kneel but when I attempted to stand up, I lost my balance and fell off! Only once did I stand up, and this was for literally a second! STILL, I can now say that I have surfed and I STOOD UP! WOOHOOOO! It was so much fun and I will definitely be trying it again at some point. I did not expect it to be so tiring though, after the 3 hours I was nearly dead, which definitely did not help with my trying to stand up! An excellent morning though!

From then, we caught the bus to take us to Byron Bay (this was today). Luckily this was only a 3 1/2 bus journey, much more bearable! I will update about the adventured at Byron Bay at some point, but at the moment we haven't done much as we have just arrived. Here are a few pics from Surf Camp - luckily none of me in the wet suit as you had to pay a ridiculous amount of money for them and weren't allowed to take your own camera.

Peace out guys!

OK, it seems that this computer is being really slow and won't let me upload any photos so I will try again another day. I think Sam may have had more success so you can check her blog out at http://sammypantha.blogspot.com/

Sand balls left behind by the Crabs

Surf Camp Beach

A crab!

Sunset at Surf Camp

Kerry and Sam walking along the beach