A Year of Work and Exploration in Australia: March 2015

Thursday, 19 March 2015

Foo Fighters & Rise Against: Live in Brisbane - Gallery and Video

Foo Fighters and Rise Against

On the 24th of Feb, on the last night of our Gold Coast trip, and on the same night as picking up the van, Charlotte and I went to a concert. Amazingly, two of my favourite bands were playing in Brisbane at the same time, so we had to go!

We arrived at the concert at the Suncorp Stadium to find that the 'Good seats' ($150 each) we had paid for were at the very bottom corner and far end of the 'good' section; the seats next to us cost $70 less.

So we watched Rise Against in these seats and, in the break between bands, walked over to the ticket office and showed them the photo of our view, which was of a concrete wall, a security guards head and the backs of several thousand in the standing crowd. We literally could not see the stage.

The ticket office were great; they asked us to wait at the front (as you can see in the below video) and they would fetch us some more tickets. So we waited for about 20 minutes, watched the first song of the Foo's from the top, then followed our new tickets to the corporate boxes! We ended up in the mega spacious, restricted area with great views and a private bar! We watched the entire Foo Fighter's concert from there and it was fantastic!

VIDEO:

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

THE VAN

So, when it came to planning our travel section of our year abroad, there were a few options:

1) Greyhound bus, hostels, flights

- This would be the easiest method of travel, the most comfortable, but also by far the most expensive. $35-40 a night for a few months at hostels, several hundred dollars for Greyhound passes and a few hundred more for flights would leave us severely out of pocket. And with nothing back at the end.

2) Rent a van.

- This is another expensive option, but take out a lot of the cost of accomodation. This is also very reliable as all mechanical problems are covered by the rental companies. However, we would still have to spend several hundred dollars each for this option and, again, get nothing back at the end.

3) Buy a van.

This has the greatest outright cost but, assuming we look after it (and we have it in the mechanics as I type), should be a viable re-sell after we are done with it, giving us a bit of money to go back to the UK with. So we bought a van!

After much scouring of the internets, Charlotte came across a Ford Econovan, 1998, 2.0L Petrol for $4000. Complete with bed, curtains, gas cooker, gas, kitchen unit, shower, sink, underbed storage, fridge, water containers and various other bits and bobs. As Charlotte was working, I got sent down to Brisbane to have a look at it.

Probably not a good idea to let me buy expensive things alone. But hey, I chose to buy it and got the price down to $3700. So we picked it up on our Gold Coast trip and brought it up to the Sunny Coast.

Now Charlotte, who likes to make everything pretty, needed to make the van homely. So one quick trip to Ikea later, we had some fabrics. Charlotte used her homemaking skills (plus one staple gun) to produce some excellent curtains and a ceiling display above the bed!

Bungee Jumping & The Gold Coast

BUNGEE JUMPING AND THE GOLD COAST

On the 22nd of February, Charlotte and I drove down to the Gold Coast, via Brisbane, for a few days away!

For my birthday in November, Charlotte had bought me a Bungee Jump experience. As we were driving down to the Gold Coast, in a PURPLE NISSAN MICRA, we booked it and I had a go on the way down!

Surprisingly enough it wasn't as terrifying as I anticipated - turns out falling is pretty easy to do. It was great fun, over too quickly and a great activity!

After that brief stop-off, we carried on down to the Gold Coast, where Charlotte had managed to find us a 5* Apartment that cost less than the local hostel...

We managed to get a room upgrade because the ceiling in ours was covered in all sorts of weird mess, and we ended up with a huge apartment. We also then took a trip to one of the best surf spots in the world: Snapper Rocks, Coolangatta. This is on the very border of Queensland and New South Wales and is peculiar in that just one minute down the road, it would be an hour behind.