East Coast of Oz 2005 – I Was a Dirty Backpacker

This is going to be a long thread so bear with me.

I traveled down the East coast of Australia back in 2005 with a good friend of mine. We saved up a load of cash, bought a panel van, and drank and smoked our way south till the money ran out. Probably the best time I’ve ever had. The memory is a bit foggy but we’ll see how this goes.

First the Map. Started in Sydney then drove all the way to Cairns in 3.5 days to begin our journey. It’s September so we opted to hit the dry season in the North first then slowly follow the worn highway 1 south. We stopped wherever we felt like and stayed until we got bored. The only way to do it. Lots of poor sods stuck on buses moving with the masses of BP (backpackers) and missing tons of great sights. As much as I bust on the convicts and their country I really do love it; apart from the cities of course.


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So, I need at least one pic of Sydney. This is where we stayed for a week till we found our Van, named the old girl Mit after a “catcher’s mit”. Fitting really. Stayed out in the ghetto that is Kings Cross. Shit hole really, but this is where we found the van. There’s an underground carpark where BP’s rent a space to sell there vehicles.


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Here’s Mit. Cost us $2800 and it had a newly rebuilt auto tranny in it. Great deal really and lasted us the whole trip with no major problems. She was decked out with a bed and mattress in the back although we did most of our sleeping in tents.


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Here’s a few pics of Sydney.
The famous Bondi Beach in winter.


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A walk along a track around Bondi to some other beach (forget the name). Along the way were some crazy boogie boarders hitting some serious waves. One guy wiped and ended up in the rocks. Pretty scary, he was under for a while but looked OK when he made it out.


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Leave it to the Ozzies to put dead people on the most expensive property in the country.


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Our first bit of Natives. Bastard attacked my buddy while I was rolling on the ground laughing. He developed a fear of them after. Fckn hilarious it was watching this Cockatoo chase him around.


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Finally off we headed north on Highway 1 (Bruce Highway). Only 2 lanes most of the way. We tried to bypass the cities as much as we could. No need for em.


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First think we bought on our way out was the book “Camps Australia” an absolute godsend. Listed just about every camper park, rest stop, campground in Oz. Most are under $20 a night. Tells you which ones have facilities, ie, toilets, showers. The price, type of location, scenery, etc. Just about everything. Saved us tons of money and showed us some great places we would have never found on our own. We picked it up at one of the tourist booths in some town on our way north. It also has an excellent road map with each location marked on it.



Camps Australia Wide

On the way we had to make a very important stop in Nimbin. Beautiful country out here about an hours drive from Byron Bay. I think WayneKerr’s got a place near here. Nimbin’s specialty is Hydroponic Horticulture and it’s a famous stop on any serious backpackers circuit. I think we visited Nimbin about a dozen times on our trip. Anyway, we picked up half a pound and went on our way.



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Nimbin was really our only detour on the trip North. We wanted to get to Cairns as fast as we could then slowly make the trek south.

We stopped for the final night of our trip north at Mission Beach but stayed out of town at Bingil bay. This is Cassowary country and my buddy swears he heard one in the bush that night.


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Nice beaches up here and very quiet. Not too many BP’s make it to here as it’s a bit off the circuit, although I here it’s getting more popular.


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More to come….

glad you enjoyed my back yard mate, keep 'em coming

Why did you post a picture of a mozzie bite?

Great beaches up that coast, I did pretty much the same trip in 1978 in an HR holden just like this.
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Best 3 months of my life. That car never even hiccuped in all that time. Some pretty rough roads too.
Made me sick in the stomach with nostalgia looking at pics of those cars and wandering down memory lane.

This is gonna be a great thread. Can't wait for the rest.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mobs00

On the way we had to make a very important stop in Nimbin.

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I fookin HATE that place.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MeMock

This is gonna be a great thread. Can't wait for the rest.

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agreed, awesome stuff, keep it coming.

Hey Mobs, awesome thread cobber. Next time 'round I'll show ya some "local" spots.

Studied in Lismore and spent alot of time in the water catchments out around Nimbin.

Man if only I could have afforded a camera back in the days we did the hemp festival out there ... unfortunately I'm too young to have been there before all the dipstick junkies landed in that lovely part of the world.

Kudos

ooh me old HR first car i ever owned :( wish i still had her, HR with x2 goodies and handled like a bag of shit and i thought it was better than hot pussy on a cold day

Very interested to hear the rest of the road trip!!:)

I seem to have misplaced quite a few pictures. If I ever find them I’ll post em.


We spent most of our time is Sydney getting drunk and by the end of the week we were both in serious pain. The few days traveling north was a time to sober up. We discovered a fkn gay beer called 4X Gold. We thought it was great till one night in Mission Beach I looked at the label and it said something like 3% alc. WTF! So we drank the last of the slab and moved on to Tooheys New.

Our beer budget was a 30 can slab every 1.5 days. Told ourselves when the money is out we go home. What’s with the cost of beer in Oz anyway? The most drunks per capita and a slab costs around $45. Bit pricey me thinks.


Moving on we pack it up and head to Cairns. We get to some hostel about a 10 minutes drive from the centre. The owner lets us pitch our tents up in the garden for something like $5 a night. This was to be the first of many drunk nights and early days being cooked out of our tents in 35C heat at 7am. That seriously sucks!

The pics are a bit sparse during this time as we were on a bender. Most night were spent at Woolies in town trying to pull. Loads of BP’s from all over. People seemed so amazed that we had our own wheels. Guess we were considered hi-so packers and so many people tried to leech rides off us. Fck that.

We did the reef for a day. I went diving my buddy went snorkeling. Good fun and for only $60 got in a few dives. The live aboards seemed great but were out of our price range and he doesn’t dive.

About 5 days in Cairns getting adjusted and we set off for the Atherton Tablelands. Cool place this is. The elevation is quite a bit higher than Cairns so it makes for some exciting driving and switchbacks to make it to the top of the plateau. We made the loop seen here from Cairns to Atherton then back to cairns to refuel at Woolies.


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Great views coming up the ridge.


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We used the camp guide looking for a place to stay around Lake Tinaroo but all were too pricey. Anything above $20 a night and we weren’t staying. So back to the book and we found some site way out where there were rock wallabies or something. Guess we could catch our own food for dinner.


The stupid things turned out to be to damn cute so I decided not to ring this one’s neck.


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Scary billabong out back that is home to a Bunyip. Saw it surface once but that was it.



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We actually ended up out here and met up with some girls we met in Cairns, well I did. She brought along her cousin who was just British in everyway, fat, ugly, annoying, bad teeth, the list goes on. My buddy was right pissed off with this situation and said I owed him one big time.

Funny night this was and we met our first Ozzie weirdo. He would certainly not be the last. The kind of guy who gives up on the world for 6 months a year and just travels around the country with his dog. Pretty cool thing to do if he wasn’t so off his rocker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bung

Why did you post a picture of a mozzie bite?

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That was the result of a vicious attack from the delinquents of the Australian Aviary family.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kingwilly

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mobs00

On the way we had to make a very important stop in Nimbin.

---

I fookin HATE that place.



agreed, awesome stuff, keep it coming.

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We never stayed in Nimbin for more than an hour or two. So many junkies there. Mostly on the heroin. There were actually needle deposit boxes in the public toilets at the park. Nasty.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wayne Kerr

Hey Mobs, awesome thread cobber. Next time 'round I'll show ya some "local" spots.

Studied in Lismore and spent alot of time in the water catchments out around Nimbin.

Man if only I could have afforded a camera back in the days we did the hemp festival out there ... unfortunately I'm too young to have been there before all the dipstick junkies landed in that lovely part of the world.

Kudos

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I'll get to my Woodford Folk Festival pics in a bit. Now that was a good time. :)

Atherton has some nice forests and National Parks. Actually all of Australia has really good National Parks and Preserves.

Some really nice maintained pathways led around the forest. One actually led inside the tree.



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Here is a huge Strangler Fig tree. Strangler Figs start out getting stuck somewhere on a tree. The seed germinates and makes its way to the ground. The fig then expands over the years to completely engulf the host tree (figs are considered parasites). The host tree then dies and rots away usually leaving a hollow in the middle of the fig tree. In the case of this tree pictured it is believed the fig had engulfed the host tree but before dying the host was knocked over in a storm and the top got stuck in another tree creating a sort of lean-to or right triangle. The fig then descended downwards to create this “curtain” effect. Hence this tree was called the curtain fig.


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Next stop was at a swimming hole. This also had some nice trail work leading off into the forest. The trails were dirt but nice none the less.

Quick stop here and a shower for the day.


A typical week consisted of camping for 5-6 days then 1 night with a roof over our heads. We needed to shower and shave sometime.

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From there it was back down to Cairns to get ready for our trip North to Cape Tribulation and the Daintree Forest.


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