I just came back from Australia and we went to Queensland and New South Wales for a proper Northern Rivers experience. We actually landed in Queensland but the border to New South Wales is just about 5 minutes away from the airport. This is the obligatory “straddling the borders” photo and the hotel we stayed in actually has one half in NSW and the other in Queensland! It helps with legislation, they had a casino in one part of the hotel.
Here’s some of the fun stuff that we did. Hand feeding a wallaby.
Deadliest Catch: New South Wales. I love the series so I’m just going to go “Yeah, sometimes you just have to set the pots and follow your heart. It’s been six weeks out at sea and I think the greenhorn ain’t gonna make it”. Heh! No, seriously, we actually pulled up some crab pots.
Yabbie pumping with Irina!
Here’s what a yabbie looks like – it has one huge claw and apparently, it’s edible. I wish I could say I caught this one but none of us had any luck with the yabbies.
I had the most awesome mud crabs! Just look at the size of the claw. Now imagine sucking off the tender flesh and filling your mouth full of pure fresh crab meat with all the natural juices. I could eat it for the rest of my life!
(if only I can say the same about my relationships)
I also learned how to eat it by picking out all the flesh with a crab fork to produce a bowl of sinfully pure crab meat. OMG I just love the way they prepare it, no sauces, just pure fresh crab. I would probably shank you with the crab fork if you took this bowl away from me. NO SHARING! *glares
Alright, don’t try this at home kids. Hand feeding is not recommended. Damn birds have tiny little teeth and they bite.
Double bacon with two poached eggs on Turkish with grilled tomato and rustic potatoes at Cafe d’bar.
This is the view you’ll get while you’ve having breakfast. I know, it’s amazing. The tiny dots are people surfing.
This is an Australian bush finger lime. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen – shaped like a finger and with perfect pearls of caviar like lime that bursts in your mouth. It’s not as sour as regular limes too.
The famous Flutterbie cakes with fresh cream, strawberries and jam in a quaint little cafe at Tyalgum – a tiny town with just a small row of shophouses right in the heartland of the Northern Rivers area. I can camwhore quite well eh? Reckon I got the act cute look down pat in this one. Yup, figure I did. 😉
Lunch at Mavis’s Kitchen at Murwillumbah – the acclaimed organic low-food-miles restaurant which is featured in MasterChef.
Yes, you’ve been to Mt Warning…but have you planked in the middle of a road with Mt Warning as the backdrop? 😉 Mount Warning is said to be the best place to catch a sunrise in Australia.
Cattle auction at Casino Beef Week in…Casino. Yup, it’s a small town in New South Wales. I just wish they had a casino so I can say I’ve been to a casino in Casino. It was awesome, we sat on bales of hay to watch the auction.
Babe was there too. The pig I mean. No, not that one, you mean, mean person. You outta be ashamed of yourself! The pink pig.
The very manly wood chopping competition. You can just smell the testosterone in the air…and also flying bits of wood chips if you’re not careful.
Skydive Byron Bay! Jumping out at 14,000 feet and experiencing a 60 second freefall is pure bliss.
Imagine sea kayaking around this bay with the waves crashing through your kayak as you power into the great blue sea. We spotted a pod of dolphins too!
This is the “After” photo with Alycia, my team mate in the kayak. We felt more exhausted than we look, or at least I did. She’s awesome though and we were the only team that didn’t overturn the kayak (insert asterisk for small print). #purewin
This is the best steak I’ve had, bar none. Medium rare with tender beef that melts in your mouth. It’s at Byron at Byron, the only 5 star resort in Byron Bay. The steak is locally sourced and all the ingredients are from organic farms a couple of miles away. Perfect farewell dinner for the trip.
I wish the trip had lasted longer. Thanks to AirAsia X, Tourism New South Wales and Tourism Northern Rivers for organizing this trip. I really liked the limo. Yup, we had our very own limo, complete with champagne. Move out of the way, important people coming through. 😉
Good Lord you did have fun in Aussie! I spent 7 years there and I’ve never been yabbie pumping. I was in Perth though.
Glad to see you’re having fun HB! 🙂
Yeah I did! It was an awesome experience, being in the Northern Rivers area, away from the bustling cities. 🙂
I’ve never been yabbie pumping too, it was fun, but I didn’t catch any. Heh!
How was skydiving? I would love to read about your experience. I mentioned in a previous post that I have always wanted to try it but never had the guts.
I love skydiving. This is my third time skydiving in Australia and the first time in Byron Bay. It’s very picturesque – the descent when you pull the chute, you get about 5 minutes to see the scenery – the bays, the towns, the ocean.
More fun than a barrel of monkeys. 🙂
Damn bro that cowgirl looks hot!
Heh! Yeah they have this pagent too – Beef Week Queen but it takes into account all sorts of things like skills in milking a cow. 🙂
That looks dangerous! What if a car hits you while you were doing that in the middle of the road? 🙁
Hello Diana! 🙂
No worries, we had a great driver who’s a lot of fun called Jason – he watched one side of the road for incoming traffic and Cheesie watched the other side.
…besides, you can hear it if cars approach. 🙂
woah Hb scrolling down this post gets better and better! had a nice time eh? planking in the middle of the road…lol
Hello Brian!
Heh! Yeah, it was a lot of fun to go to the Northern Rivers area. I’ve never been here despite all the time I spent doing my uni in Melbourne. It was great, the small town ambiance.
Casino has a three digit population figure and the Casino Beef Week was interesting. 🙂
casino beef week? how does that work? beef in terms of gambling jargon or meat from a cow? lolll
Haha! That one threw us off a bit too bro!
Casino is actually a small town in New South Wales. 🙂
There isn’t a casino in Casino, unfortunately but there are pokies.
ok now i’m jealous you get to go on this awesome australia trip. The food looks great! Can see that you’re having such a good time.
Heh! Well, you’re always going to Europe anyway but ya, Australia is a lot of fun! I loved being back and doing something totally different – instead of the cities, we went to the more unspoiled rural areas.
You’ll love Byron Bay! There’s a lot of great restaurants with organic food (they’re also big on low-food-miles) and locally produced wine! 🙂
I’m allegic to seafood (except fish) and the one thing that I regret not being able to eat is CRAB! And those crabs looked awesomely DELICIOUS and JUICY!
Oh noes! 🙁
I think I would eat seafood anyway even if I’m allergic to it – all the prawns, crabs and oysters you’re missing. T_T
I’m sorry to hear that.
Yup, it is sinfully juicy, they just cook it by itself coz it’s very fresh so the juices are from the crab…divine! 🙂
HB, great photos in your entry. I see it was so much fun on your trip. Funny when having someone take your picture the secnd one from the top entry. It made you look like an angel would a halo on top of your head. My friends all see like a halo. I had friends always take funny pictures of me coconut trees, streetlight growing on top of my head in pictures wiseguys.
Thanks Vickie!
Heh! Yeah, I noticed that border structure and wanted to take a photo with it so we went off early to get a shot there. 🙂
We arrived early in the morning so that’s the sun rising that’s causing the halo effect. 🙂
Haha! I guess that is one way to make photos fun. Hmm…I could try that. 😉
Oh! Crab!
Yeah! It was delicious Mila! 🙂
I loved the huge mud crabs. The claws are gigantic, full of flesh. I wish I could eat it all over again. 🙂
Another break up? Thatta boy! Well done, dude. You deserve it. Got bored so fast? 🙂
Eh? What’s that gotta do with the Northern Rivers trip? That happened way before this vacation. I haven’t been in a relationship for quite a while before this one and don’t plan to again. 🙂
I’m going to keep myself occupied instead!
I loved going back to Aussie, it was quite fun for me since I haven’t been back since my uni days in Melbourne. It was good to visit the places that’s a bit more obscure and interesting instead of the same ol’ tourist hotspots. 🙂
so awesome!!! was it a tandem dive or did u dive alone??? AWESOME!!!!
Yeah, it was a great experience! 😀
Well, as for the skydive, unfortunately it’s a tandem one – that’s a tandem harness you see there.
The last time I skydived in Aussie, it was an AFF (assisted free fall) where you skydive alone, with the instructor holding on (but not strapped to you) for assistance.
I wanted to go solo skydiving this time around too, but I went with a group where every single one is doing their first skydive, plus this was sponsored by Skydive Byron Bay so I can’t switch it. 🙂
It still was good though – the view was amazing and there’s some terminal velocity action (60 seconds freefall) at a 14,000 feet skydive. 😀
You know what would be awesome? Jumping out of a plane WITHOUT a chute and getting a tandem stapped on midair. There’s only two people in the world who’s done it before. I want to be the third. Heh!
How does the wood chopping competition work? Most beautiful log?
Heh! Close enough. 😉
It was actually the person who can split the wood the fastest. Each man was given the same size of log and they started hacking away at it when the whistle blew, just raining blows between their legs while standing on it, first on one side, then the other.
It was quite interesting really. I have a video of it somewhere. 🙂
hehehehhehe who managed to steal some of your mud crab meat bowl 😛
Haha! T___________T
Yes, you ate some of the mud crab that I so diligently used the crab fork to harvest for like an hour (or so it seems).
My good deed of the day. 😉
What’s that in the 2nd pic? A halo above your head??? Nahhhh!!! Impossible! That will be the day. Muahahahahahaha!!!
Haha! Well, maybe it wasn’t an angelic type of halo. 😉
It could be God’s wrath or maybe I’m secretly the left hand of God.
Yar, I have commited blasphemy and used the name of the Lord in vain. 😉
wahhhh……dammn shiok wei!!!
Yeah, it’s a lot of fun! It’s very different from the cities that I’m used to.
This is rural outback Aussie, very nice change of pace. 🙂
man, i really wanna try sky diving one of these days, too bad the cost is just way too prohibitive here.
Yeah skydiving can be an expensive sport coz of the plane you need to take you up. I think the gas for that is the bulk of the expenses. 😡
There is a place in Johor where you can skydive for about 1k (RM) per person if you can get 10 people to share the plane. I think I’ve mentioned it to you before bro.
…they need the person to book to have a Solo A license though but I’ve HEARD people going skydiving alone, and they don’t really check everyone’s license. 😉
The chutes they have are limited but some of them has an automatic deploy at a preset height so theoretically, you CAN skydive alone (from my point of view) as long as you know how to steer and land, which a 2 hour crash course can fix.
The trick is not to freak out in the middle while freefalling. The chute will still autodeploy but if you forget to steer, you’ll miss the dropzone and that’s very dangerous coz you might land on a tree, someone’s house and break something (people have even died from cracking a skull from a bad landing).
However, if you hit the drop zone (which is pretty large), you’ll be safe. 😀
Why the wallaby look like kangaroo? And, if you want to do planking, please face down completely.
A wallaby looks a lot like a kangaroo. It’s just several differences in size, tail etc which differentiates the two. 🙂
Haha! Yeah, I know and I did in the first one, but the smell of asphalt didn’t agree with my sinuses. 😉
The food photos, OMG….. its making me drool and wet my keyboard. Especially the medium rare steak. omgomgomg….
Hello Fiona!
Yeah, we had a lot of good food in Northern Rivers. The places we went to are very big on organic and healthy food. They also promote low-food-miles e.g. closer the source to the plate, the better! 🙂
…everything you eat is fresh coz they don’t import stuff from a continent away but instead use local produce.
The steak was awesome. They had the medium rare down pat! 😀