After suffering through another painful night of crows crowing and possums menacing about on top of my tent, I could not have been happier when the ferry pulled ashore just after 10:00am. To say that the final leg of our “vacation” had gotten off to a bumpy start would be like saying the Toronto Maple Leafs are a terrible hockey team. It was painfully fuckin’ obvious! After sprinting on to the ferry and running around naked in celebration of getting off the island, we enjoyed the ride back to the mainland and caught a bus to the closest city, Rockhampton, which is affectionately known as Australia’s “beef capital”. Quite the claim to fame, I know. Eventually we made our way to our hostel (Rockhampton YHA [7.5/10], and were pleasantly surprised to see that we had our own free-standing unit. Turns out, the hostel had purchased a bunch of these modular units that were used as athlete housing for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Hell, it even came with Olympic pictures on the wall and an official certificate stating that some amateur athletes had taken a shit in the same toilet I was now about to defecate in! After spending the afternoon lounging about, Leeanna and I headed to the biggest tourist spot in town for the evening, the Great Western Hotel. The Great Western is really unlike anything I had ever seen or heard of before; a western style steakhouse and bar, with a giant indoor rodeo arena attached to it. They apparently run some pretty big rodeo events here, and every Friday night they have practice bull rides which are open to anybody to come and watch. So, seeing as how it was Friday, Lee and I crushed some steaks, enjoyed some cold beverages and proceeded to watch kids, teens, and adults of all ages attempt to ride the ferocious bulls. In all fairness, some of them weren’t that scary and were comically pathetic. For the most part though, it’s safe to say that dudes who ride bulls are some of the toughest sons-of-bitches on the planet (if you don’t believe me go watch the PBR on TV). All in all, it was a good show, but I just could not stop wondering how in the hell you get into bull riding in the first place?
Saturday morning we both woke up feeling the effect of one too many drinks the night before at the rodeo. Seeing as how we’re troopers though (and had to check out by 10:00am) we rounded up our gear, left it in the luggage storage and made our way to the local shopping complex, as we now had fourteen hours to kill before our bus to Hervey Bay that night at midnight. Seeing as how there is not a whole lot to do in Rockhampton, we spent the day at the mall and did a bit of shopping before catching a screening of the surprisingly good Ben Affleck movie, “The Town”. Later in the afternoon, I also happened to have this feeling that I should double-check our bus tickets. Well, wouldn’t you know, Brenty-Boo in all his wisdom had bought bus tickets for the night before. After calling the bus company and confirming that I was in fact a dumbass, I had to shell out another $100 for tickets that night. So with our new bus tickets, we made our way over towards the bus stop around dinner time and had to spend four hours hanging out in a McDonald’s, followed by another hour in a gas station restaurant. Best day ever! Finally at 12:15am, our bus arrived which was to be taking us south down the coast for six hours to Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. Leeanna and I were both looking forward to a good night’s rest, but let’s be real that would just be too easy. Within a minute of sitting on the bus, I started to notice that there were cockroaches everywhere. Fast-forward a couple more minutes, and after not telling Leeanna about my discovery, she screams that there are cockroaches crawling all over me and my knapsack. Upon further inspection with my trusty flashlight, I discovered that there were in fact hundreds of cockroaches everywhere on the floor and wall of the bus. No one else seemed to mind/notice, but we sure did and promptly moved from the back of the bus to the front. There were still some roaches at the front, but not enough to deter me from grabbing some sleep. Pretty sure Leeanna spent the entire six hour bus ride observing the behaviour of everyone’s favourite insects, deciding that this was a much safer option than dozing off like myself and the rest of the passengers who were bound to all die at the merciless antennae of the cockroaches.
After somehow surviving our bus ride, Leeanna and I rolled into Hervey Bay around 6:00am and I thought it was only fair that we should reward ourselves with a trip to McDonald’s while we wait for our shuttle bus to the hostel. After devouring our meals, it dawned on me that I had now eaten three meals at McDonald’s, one at KFC, and one at a greasy steakhouse all in the span of a mere 38 hours. Some people might be disgusted by such a statistic, but I felt I had reached a new high that day. No man should be able to function after such a stretch, but there I was feeling like Tommy Lee circa 1986. After checking into our hostel (The Friendly Hostel [9/10]), grabbing some groceries, and then booking our skydiving and Fraser Island tours for the following days, it was time to catch up on some much needed sleep in the form of nap time. If there’s one thing I love more than Mickey Dee’s, it’s a solid afternoon siesta. Feeling energized, that night we decided to take some bikes and head down to the beautiful beach front esplanade. Although it is very touristy, I must say it was well-maintained and a gorgeous place to go. It has a great trail system and some stunning views of the ocean. We followed up our little exercise session by settling in with a box of goon (see: cheap 4L box of wine) and some reality television, which let’s be real is the perfect Sunday night in anyone’s book.
October 25th. Yes, that shall officially go down in history as the day Brent and Leeanna decided to jump out of a plane. On that note, we were woken up earlier than planned that morning by a hostel employee who informed us that our skydiving would be commencing earlier than intended, as the weather patterns were changing and they wanted us to go before lightning had a chance to strike us down. With no time to think about what we were doing or second-guess ourselves, we were promptly taken to the local airport and given a safety briefing by a dude who had jumped out of a plane like 10,000 times (no joke!). Still not feeling anymore optimistic after the safety briefing, it was now or never. As luck would have it though (for me at least), the plane we would jumping from could only take one instructor and one skydiver at a time, so somehow we came to the conclusion that Leeanna would go first and me second. With that in mind, I made my way to the landing spot along the beach with another employee, while Leeanna was taken up to 14,000 feet! Next thing I know, a small speck is falling out of the sky at a rapid rate above the ocean and it magically turned into a small speck with a parachute. After safely landing on the beach, Leeanna seemed to be in shock that she had done it and quite frankly I was in shock she had done it! The same girl who had refused to do any kind of adventure sport during our time in Oz somehow just jumped out of a plane from 14,000 feet! Next up, it was my turn to go, so we made our way back the airport. While we were waiting and getting the plane ready, they showed us a video of Leeanna’s skydive which was comical to say the least. It featured some excellent shots of her drooling with her eyes closed. Turns out, she’s not as brave as I thought! With that in mind, I told them not to worry about filming me to save myself the embarrassment and the instructor, pilot, and I loaded up on to the plane. The plane takes about 20 minutes to get up to the desired elevation, which unfortunately gives you lots of time to ponder everything that can go wrong. Apparently, when I get nervous, I also have a tendency to fart. Now this isn’t a big problem in public spaces, but when you are in the world’s smallest airplane with a man strapping you to his chest and your asshole is pressed against his genitals, well you can see where this might cause some problems. I did everything in my power not to laugh and prayed that my instructor would not just throw me out the plane on my own into the ocean. Hands down, one of the five most awkward moments of my life! To get back on track, all the farting in the world doesn’t matter once that door on the plane opens and it’s time to rock and roll. Next thing I remember, after my fart and the door opening, was falling towards the coastline with my heart racing and some major breathing problems! Despite this, I do remember us getting some magnificent views of Fraser Island (the world’s largest sand island) and thinking that it would have been much more convenient to fart out here. After a 60-second freefall and a breezy parachute ride, we safely landed on the beach and I crossed one more thing off of the bucket list. With our adrenaline fix clearly taken care of for the day, we spent the rest of the day relaxing and booking the remainder of our accommodations for Leeanna’s time in Australia. For an evening activity, we decided to take a nice leisurely bike ride again, although this idea was quickly nixed as I became a victim of a magpie swooping. For those not in the know, a magpie is a bird about the size of a rotund seagull that is very territorial during its breeding season and takes to swooping at the backs of people’s heads that come into its territory. Sometimes they just graze you, as if to say, “get the fuck out of here, I warned you”, but other times they well actually connect with their beaks or claws and do some damage. Luckily I just got grazed, although it did scare the shit out of me and cause me to fall of my bike like a jackass. Lesson for the day: skydiving fun, small black and white birds dangerous.
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