Australia

a travel blog by Jason Kester

The Australia leg of this trip was done with my buddy Paul in tow. We rented a panelvan, and drove up and down the east coast, stopping wherever it looked like there would be good surf. The East Australia backpacker's circuit is pretty cool. Since everybody is either traveling north or south along the same route, and since everybody hits pretty much the same stops, you end up seeing a lot of the same people from place to place. Pretty soon, you end up with this loosely affiliated traveling posse of a dozen folks that always seem to turn up everyplace you go. All sorts of fun!

For Leg Two, it was off to Bangkok to meet Jay, and later, Hannah for some rockclimbing on the beaches near Krabi. I put together about two hundred pages of trip reports below, so I won't go into detail. Rest assured, it was amazing!
view all 14 photos for this trip

Mackay, Australia

Hey all. I just got back from three days of diving on the great barrier reef. That, combined with a couple days in the pool & some classwork is
enough to get a fella certified down here.

It's a pretty cool operation. Much different than in the states, where there would be dozens of waivers and big warning signs and absolutely no alcohol on the boat. Here, the only piece of advice was "figure out how much alcohol you think you'll need, then double it." Australia rules!

As to the actual diving, it was great. I did an advanced course on the boat that added a 30m deep dive and a night dive, along with some additional skills. The night dive was really cool. There were dozens of meter long travellies following along at your shoulder. Whenever you'd spot a fish with your dive light, they'd flash past and grab it. It was so much fun that I just spent the rest of the dive spotlighting food for them.

The reef is pretty cool. Lots of big fish, sea turtles, rays and such. I even came up against a 5 foot reef shark.

Anyway, this internet connection has some serious issues, so I'd better get this off while I can. I'm off for Thailand in a week, so the next message you get will likely be from there.

written by

Jason Kester on November 23, 2000 from Mackay, Australia

from the travel blog: Australia

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Sydney, Australia

Not too much to report since I last wrote. I managed to cram quite a bit of surfing into my last week here, and even got a couple dives in too.

I spent a few nights in Byron Bay on the way back down the coast. It's a pretty cool town with a great beach. They have this funky hostel there that attracts an eclectic subset of the backpacker community. This place has free digeridoo lessons, fire dancing and some really strange accomodations. I slept in a teepee.

Anyway, I'm back in Sydney now, trying to come up with a day's worth of tourism to keep me busy until I fly out tonight. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to check my mail in Thailand, so you all may get a bit of a break from my lame trip reports for a while.