Following the debacle that was Kiel’s first night in Australia, we were both clearly feeling the effects as neither one of us was able to get out of bed before 1:00pm. Myself in particular was in rough shape, as I could not stop shaking, always a good sign that your body is up to the task. When we finally did manage to get out of bed after lunch time, Kiel and I decided to do what I had done the day before, walk aimlessly around the city and just “check it out”. Having been in Australia for so long, a lot of it was kind of lost on me, but Kiel on the other hand took every opportunity to point out how beautiful of a city Brisbane is and how gorgeous all the ladies were. I’m still not sure what he liked more, the city or the women, but I have a pretty good idea. After taking in most of the sights, including the downtown, the Story Bridge and Southbank, we headed back to the hostel where Kiel attempted to cook us a dinner of chicken and rice. Somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong and the next thing I knew, Kiel had filled up the entire kitchen and common area with smoke and there were fifty people all hacking their lungs out. I tried to hide and pretend I didn’t know him, but it seemed that everyone in the place wanted to kill the two of us, that is if the smoke inhalation didn’t get to them first. Later in the evening, Kiel decided that he wanted to go out and party. This was all fine and dandy, except for the fact that my body was on the cusp of a total breakdown and my liver may have exploded if I consumed any booze. With this in mind, I left Kiel at the entrance to a club called “Family” that had gay night every Sunday night. He didn’t seem to mind, and just waltzed in on his own, in what has to be one of the weirder club drop-offs I have ever experienced. With Kiel dancing and wheeling away in the gay bar, I decided to head back to the hostel and watch “An Inconvenient Truth” on my laptop, all the while breathing in the filthy stench of the German brigade that was parked in my dorm.
Monday morning I woke at a fairly decent hour, which is more than Kiel could say. With Kiel nursing a hangover (this became a common theme during his time Down Under), I set out to try and go on the guided walking tour which I had attempted to do a few days before. Unfortunately, the douche bag who runs the tours decided to not show up again. Really good business practice I must say, although on the positive side it did allow me to call up the XXXX Brewery and arrange to do a tour there. For those not in the know, XXXX is one of Australia’s best known and tastiest beers, and is far and away the most popular beer in the great state of Queensland. As my tour was booked in relatively short time, I had to hustle my way across the city and learned that I would be the only person on the brewery tour. Since it was only Monday morning, I guess this was slightly acceptable, although I did feel a bit weird being escorted around this huge factory on my own. The tour itself was actually quite informative and well put together, and if anything I must say there was too much information! During the tour, I was informed that the brewery was closing early that day for a private function and that upon completion of the tour I would only have half an hour to “hang around”. Oh, and did I mention that in that half an hour I HAD TO drink the four complimentary pints that were bestowed upon me as a paying customer. Well let me tell you, after downing four pints in a half an hour I had one of the better Monday morning buzzes of recent memory! Seeing as how I was slightly tipsy, I felt it would be in my best interest to walk the two kilometres back to the hostel to give myself a chance to sober up a bit. Naturally I also had to down a ten pack of McDonald’s nuggets, cause let’s be real, McDonald’s is the shit when you’re shittered! When I returned to the hostel, I was relieved to see that Kiel was still alive after his gay bar soiree the night before and was ready to dial it up for another night. The evening started with a little pre-drink consisting of Kiel’s new favourite drink, goon. I have never seen anyone who drinks wine (and cheap wine at that) at such a crippling pace. I tried to warn him, but as usual my words fell on deaf ears. A few drinks later (or a lot if you’re Kiel), we made our way down to Birdee Num Num’s where Kiel almost immediately started arguing with some random guy about the negatives of universal health care. From what I can tell, it started off as a friendly argument, but quickly escalated to the point where I thought Kiel might be in for some fisticuffs. Thankfully, the moron’s friends who Kiel was chirping with got him to calm down and we were able to go about our business of trying to win some money playing Bingo. In the first game of Bingo, Kiel somehow managed to beat everyone in the bar and scored a cool $50 that was promptly put into the “five extra jugs of beer” fund. What made this feat even more impressive was the fact that I’m pretty sure Kiel was borderline blind drunk when he won! By the time the next game of bingo came around, all of our score cards were soaked in beer, which made playing impossible, but made drinking and having a good time a very acceptable thing to do instead. As you can imagine, the night ended with us being blind drunk and making our mother proud! I can now officially say I got hammed twice in one day, which is a feat I don’t think I have accomplished since my days of heavy cottage going a few years ago.
The next morning it was business as usual for the Moreau brothers; sleeping in and feeling like shit until after lunch sometime. That afternoon I had booked us to go abseiling in the city at a place known as Kangaroo Cliffs (scary name, I know!). Quick heads up on what exactly abseiling is; it’s basically just rappelling down a rock wall or cliff. I like to simply describe it as the opposite of rock climbing. After making our way over to the cliffs with our instructor and going over the safety procedures, I decided that Kiel should go first as I was too much of a pussy to go. Kiel was shaking like crazy the first time he went over the ledge, but I have to give him credit he did it and made it to the bottom in one piece. I, on the other hand, well that’s a different story. On my first attempt, I slowly backed up to the edge of the cliff and had my feet dangling over the edge ready to go. It was around this time that I didn’t listen properly to the instructions and lost my balance and footing and swung off the cliff in my harness and smashed up against the rock walls. While I was hanging there scared out of my mind, I looked up to see the look on our instructor’s face that said something along the lines of, “holy shit, what just happened”. All I could think about was the excruciating pain in my arm and my elbow that was bleeding everywhere. Eventually I managed to get back on track and rappel down the rock face. My ego and elbow may have been a bit bruised but I did manage to get down the wall three more times afterwards (Kiel did four more) before we decided that we could no longer walk up the gruelling stairs to get to the top of the cliffs. Thankfully, the rest of our abseiling went off without any injuries and I must say it was an awesome experience, despite my near death experience. After dressing my wounds and getting my game face back on, Kiel and I headed to Birdee Num Num’s for some pub trivia that night. Our team ended up finishing in third place out of about fifteen teams, although I must confess we did cheat a bit by sending Kiel up to the dorm room to look up answers o his laptop. Unfortunately, it was winner take all and we did not do enough cheating, so the only thing left to do was to drown ourselves in our sorrow. And by sorrow I of course mean beer! Kiel ended up leaving the bar later that night as he said he felt like dancing and apparently somehow ended up at ANOTHER club that was hosting their gay night. I was starting to sense a recurring theme, although it may have just been his luck. After Kiel left, I felt it would be a good opportunity to call my parents in my inebriated state and give them an update on how their two favourite sons were doing. Thankfully, they didn’t pick up the phone and instead I left them a solid rant of a voicemail before tucking myself into bed.
Seeing as how I managed to make it to bed long before Kiel the night before, I inevitably had to shake him to life the next morning as we were scheduled to make our way by bus to Byron Bay, which was a three hour bus ride down the coast. While roaming about the hostel that morning, I noticed a sign on one of the doors that said, “Google Bilderberg Group”. Immediately I knew this must’ve been Kiel’s handy work and asked him about it. He informed me in a fit of laughter that he had returned to the hostel the night before at about 5:00am and proceeded to put that sign up, along with another one that said “9/11 Was An Inside Job”. My guess is the second sign was quickly taken down. Regardless, Kiel was quite proud of himself and his efforts to get his message of anarchy out there. The sign master and I made it to Byron Bay by the early afternoon, but not before Kiel was having a sick attack in the bus toilet. We somehow made it to our hostel (Nomad’s Byron Bay [8.5/10]) in one piece and again were sleeping in an eight-person dorm. With Kiel resting up at the dorm, I decided to check out the town and do some grocery shopping. Byron Bay is one of the most well-known places on the tourist trail in Australia. It seems to walk a very fine line, as it is big enough that it has all the amenities you need, but small enough that it still feels a bit like a hippy community, which it is famed for being. It also happens to have excellent beaches and a moderate year round climate which makes it a haven for backpackers. It’s one of those towns that also happens to party seven nights a week thanks to the large number of travellers! For dinner, Kiel ended up cooking us some delicious burgers on the barbecue, which we happily washed down with some beers followed by the good ole goon. This in turn was followed by a visit to the semi-famous backpackers bar, Cheeky Monkeys. We ended up rocking out there for a bit before I got booted for texting, yes texting, on my phone while I was waiting for Kiel take a leak. I pleaded with the bouncer outside to let me back in to try and find my brother, explaining that Kiel did not have a phone and I wasn’t sure if he knew how to get back to the hostel. Eventually my begging worked and the bouncer let me in, but only after he held my passport hostage sp that I would swiftly return. I never did find Kiel, so I instead decided to make myself feel better by eating a steak wrap. Let me tell you, it was a classy wrap and definitely made my night that much better. Delicious with a capital “D”.
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