Day 142

Wow. A lot has happened since my last post. We didn't have wi-fi until now, so I will try to catch up in this one. We left Airlie Beach and went to 1770. We camped there for a night and met some awesome Aussies and learned a lot about Indonesia. We went to Rainbow Beach after that and camped out for two days. You can actually go in the ocean from there south, so we spent a lot of time in the ocean. It then started pouring too hard to camp, so we packed everything up and continued south. We saw Surfer's Paradise and a lot of famous beaches as we traveled. We stopped when we got to Byron Bay. That place is perfect. We stayed in a hotel and rented a couple of surfboards. The water was super warm, clear, and tropical. The surf was about head high and just reeling. It just came off of a point in consistent lines, so there was no shortage of waves even with it being crowded. We surfed all day for two days and then headed to Brisbane. We picked up another 6 berth camper van in to transfer to Melbourne there. We saw a lot of sights, including the CSIRO Parkes Observatory. During the drive, there was the craziest, lightning storm/sunset that I have ever seen. There was blue and purple lightning in every direction with stormy clouds and the blue/pink/orange sky of a sunset. It was amazing. We dropped off the camper soon after and landed in Newstead. We are staying at the Newstead Live music festival and have been having a lot of fun. We have met a ton of nice people and will be here for a couple more days. Afterwards, I think we are going to fly to Indonesia.

P.S.
A local cricket team had batting practice and lent me some gear and let me try it out. It was a lot different than baseball but a lot of fun. We have it on video, but I can't post it on here. Hopefully I'll get it up somehow in the near future.