We left Lake Macquarie early since we had a lot to do the next day. We wanted to go surfing in Manley, since we knew there was usually good surfing there and we hadn’t yet been able to surf on the trip. Miraculously, we made it to the beach without a hindrance through Sydney morning rush hour, but when we arrive there, there were hardly any waves. A few waves would come every 20 minutes. We decided to go for it anyway since we had come all the way out to Manly and we saw others trying too. It wasn’t a warm day and we rented wet suits as well as surfboards and therefore we didn’t get to use our new rash shirts which still had their tags attached. It was a very slow surfing day, and I only caught about 3 waves but never managed to stand. We had to leave Manley by noon and go to the opposite end of Sydney to Kingsgrove because there we had the rest of our stuff in storage.

Sydney

We had to take apart the whole van and luckily there was a lot of storage space under the bed which we utilized to the fullest and we were able to fit at least three times as many belongings than we had currently with us. We thought we would be even slower than we had been previously which was about 100km/h. We always joked that even if we wanted to speed we couldn’t. We could drive with the pedal to the medal and the van would not go faster. It was like cruse control. Going uphill was terrible because it would slow down drastically and we had to down shift so it wouldn’t stall. The engine would growl and the speedometer would slowly decrease and if there was a passing lane, cars would be passing us. Sometimes on rare occasions the van would have its good days and it would get up to 130 km/h which was even above speed limit. We kept trying to figure out what cased the sudden surge of speed, opening the water tank, full gas tank, air conditioning, but nothing seemed to do the trick. And now when we were so heavy the van had a good day. We drove down to Wollongong and briefly walked around the town, beach, and lighthouse.

We drove south down to Surfer’s Paradise which we were really excited about since we wanted to go surfing and figured where could there possibly be a better place to surf than Surfer’s Paradise? I mean the name says it all. I’ve heard it’s a developed area so I was expecting the rows of tall hotels and apartment buildings along the beach. We found a parking spot, which was always a challenge with our bus since we took up two parking spaces and then looked out into the ocean to see the surfers catching waves. When we did we couldn’t see any. On a closer look we saw about two but they were lying in the ocean not catching waves. The waves were choppy and uneven and hardly suitable for surfing. I’m no surfing expert by any means but I do know when I wouldn’t go surfing.

I asked the lady at the booth by the beach who was renting surfboards whether this was typical weather, thinking that she’d tell me this was way out of the ordinary and has been the worst day she’s ever seen, I mean this was Surfer’s Paradise.

The most stereotypical pic from Surfer's Paradise

“It’s pretty much always like this,” she said. “It’s usually good around 6AM.” Most surf beaches are good at 6AM, how is this possibly a surfer’s paradise, I thought. Basically it’s a name they gave to a not so great beach so tourists would visit and they do. Most tourists go to the Gold Coast and that includes Australians who don’t usually sight see their own country but they’ll swarm to the gold coast because that’s where Australia’s four theme parks are such as Sea World and Warner Brothers Movie World. I met an Aussie who was jealous of the quantity of theme parks we have in the states because they have a severe deficiency of amusement parks. Instead they have a crappy fair in cities like Melbourne and Sydney called Luna Park. They have no more than 5 mediocre rides and charge about as much as a 6 Flags ticket in the USA for an unlimited day pass. He told me he wants to go to the US to do a tour of theme parks which I thought sounded incredibly fun.

We did not go to any of the parks because we’ve been to many more larger, better and cheaper parks so we weren’t going to waste our time and money. We did however go shopping for rash shirts because we figured eventually we’ll go surfing and then we’ll need them because what do two armature surfers, who can hardly catch a wave and never stand up need? A rash shirt obviously. One store was having a two for one sale so even though we weren’t ecstatic with the design, we figured we really didn’t need the most expensive coolest rash shirts and any would do. So for 20 bucks a piece we got a shirt each which was a good deal but we have not used them yet (3 months later) so we have not gotten our value for money.

Instead of surfing since it was incredibly windy we flew a kite on the beach. I had picked up a kite at one of the campsites for 2 dollars, which Hendrik made fun of me for but he had never flown a kite before which I found strange so he particularly loved it and let the childhood fantasy fulfil itself. What we saw more than surfers were kite surfers and the activity looked really fun but I probably wouldn’t have the muscles for it. I would have loved to try it. So maybe the Aussies in their habit just shortened the name of the town from Kite Surfer’s Paradise to Surfer’s Paradise