After a nice quick and easy flight up there the Gold Coast, I was greeted at the airport by someone who was a gap student at my prep school 12 years ago, Anita Bowman (or Miss. Bowman as she was back then)! I had randomly messaged her while I was still in Sydney as I thought it would be fun to see each other again and I didn’t have anything to loose. She replied and offered to let me stay with her so I gladly accepted. Back at her flat, she pulled out a seemingly ancient hard drive that had all the photos from her year working as a gap student in England of which many featured me, my brother, and friends from way back when. It was such a good evening reminiscing about everything and everyone. In the morning, she dropped me off at the beach and we took a selfie to accompany the one we took together back in the UK all those years ago.


I then wandered around the coast and up the various heads (trying to not be blown away/retrieving hats that were being blown away in the process). There were some great views back over the aptly named Gold Coast.


In the afternoon I got the bus to Byron bay which is just down the coast. However, on the way I began to feel a little off. After I’d done my food shop for this part of the trip and cooked some supper, I was wiped out. I was only in Byron for 2 nights, one full day and on the one full day, I really didn’t have a huge amount of energy. I walked up to the light house and the most easterly point of mainland Australia, hoping to see some whales from the top. Alas I didn’t and I didn’t reach want to hang around up there as I could really feel myself becoming quite ill so I came back down and back to my hostel. On the way back, I walked along the beach which was fun as the sand “sings” (squeaks..)! Squeaky sand video on YouTube

