Australia

After getting skunked (re wakeboarding) in New Zealand; we approached Australia this time with a couple prior contacts. Greg Nelson got us in contact with a handful of his friends. We'd also emailed Amber Wing in hopes of getting some wakeboarding in.
At the airport in New Zealand, we finally got on the internet again for a few minutes. Ian "Clarky" Clark, one of Nelsons contacts had emailed us back inviting us to come riding with him over the weekend at warrengong. The only problem is that we were flying into Sydney and he lived down at Melbourne, a 10+ hour drive. When we landed in Sydney we broke one of our initail rules and bought a prepaid cell phone for about the cost of a calling card. Our calling cards so for had only worked for us about 30% of the time. We also went online for the cheapest airfare and booked a ticket and a rental car for Melbourne. After a solid days travel we pulled up in Ian and Maree' house for the evening. After Thai take out, we had some great conversations, they helped us plan out our trip and hit the sac.
The next day we had the morning off and were able to take care of a ton of errands and work. We also got to hang out with Clarks kids Cameron, Jonathan, Ashleigh and Jessica. They all ripped it on the tramponline. That afternoon Clarky got home from work and we headed off for the lake. The next morning the conditions were a little mixed. The wind was off and on, and it was off and on with sun and clowds. The ski club down there was amazing. Killer facilities and a friendly group of skiers. This was also the first ride of the trip behind a true wakeboard boat. Clarky had a nice Mastercraft X2 that he loaded up to the brim with people. The only bummer was with the air and wind, I turned into a popsicle. It was a bit hard to shred it colder conditions, but I gave it my best. Everyone had a great time throughout the day as they all took turns on the water.
The next leg of our travel was from Warrengong up through the surf coast back to Melbourne. This would be a two day adventure winding along the coast checking all the tourist sites. Each tourist stop we got to we would sprint from the car to the site, take pictures and bail allowing us to maximize our time. The waves weren't that great everywhere we checked. On the south the well had size but was too windy. On the eastern spots was small and calm. Toward the end of the day I spotted a right handed reef brake that was head high to overhead with only a couple guys out. I jumped in until it surfed 'till dark. We headed to the nearest camp ground, pitched our tent, fixed dinner and called it. The next morning we drove north checking all the spots, finally we got to Bells beach but the wind was strong and onshore.
We'd forgotten our maps at Clarky's house. After saying our goodbye it was off up the coast to Sydney. We took the coastal root to check the scenery and get wet. There were many incredible views, we also saw some kangaroos!!! We did some camping and some surfing...but the driving eventually got to us. We definitely went crazy. Singing, dancing, delusion...we were stoked to finally meet up with Amber Wing and her boyfriend Andrew for a few days. The two of them really took care of us and made our trip to Austriallia special. We wakeboarded and surfed just about every day. Amber killed it sticking all her usual tricks with style, and then busted a big grabbed heel five first try. Ambers boat was a 220v Supra which threw out an awesome wake, especially for just stock ballast. To date the MB and the Supra are the only two wakes I've ridden stock ballast and had a big wake. Andrew killed it barefoot on the wakeskate. Andrew is photographer and an athlete, who spends most winters at the snow. He also skates, and surfs well too. Andrew would take me out in the water, and Amber and Mon would hang out.
We also got to meet several of their friends. One particular night we all had dinner and ended up going back to one of Ambers friends house. Well....it wasn't really a house. It was more like the coolest living quarters you could imagine. Dean the clown and Jamie who is a young professional golfer. They live in a friends vacant office building that is at least 50,000 squar feet. Their bedrooms are old board rooms. They have commercial kitchens at their disposal. They have ginormous wherehouse where they've set up a go cart track. A driving range out back. And a car race track driveway out front. The clown jugled for us, and turned out to be one of the funniest characters we've met so far in our trip. Half the things he said I needed Amber to translate for us. After several days at Ambers family's house in Cronulla, the surf town where Occy is from, we headed north to Andrews place for some more surfing and fun before we would head north to Brisbane. Our drive north to brisbane would be one of our longest ones. I surfed at Seal rocks the first day of the drive. Day two we stopped by Stoney Park which had a killer rail park. The surf was completely flat this day while we checked every surf spot up the coast. We finally made our way into Byron Bay for the late afternoon early evening. The town was one of the top ten coastal towns I've ever been to. With cool shops and beaches, the vibe here was similar to back home in santa cruz. It was sort of a hippy/surf town. As we walked through the town we crossed a beach restaurant and bar that had a legit reggae band playing. We got in for free and order ourselves some free waters at the bar. After being carded on the way in and stamped, they made Monica show her stamp when picking up the waters...which made for a good laugh. After the show we found a killer campground on the water and went for our second run of the day.

The next day we returned to the cable the next day, for a full day of riding. The Bli Bli cable has the best rails of any park I've been to so far. They had over 15 rails set up so that you transfer from one rail to the next to maximize your laps. All of the up angles and gaps were really smooth. I had so much fun sessioning the rail. Unfortunately, it was cloudy with a bit of rain all day. The sun peaked its way through the clouds at one point, and we tried to snap as many photos as we could.
After the cable we headed south to our first hotel room since tahiti. We would have camped, but the rain really turned on late in the evening. Fortunately, we decided to turn on the TV in the room. As soon as the news blended its way through the darkness of the screen our trip would be dramatically altered. We were scheduled to fly into Bangkok Thailand the next day. In the breaking news it announced that the bangkok airport was under siege from protestors. The military wanted the prime minister, whom had just been democratically voted in six months prior, to resign from his position. So instead of going to Thailand and wakeboarding at this amazing facility called Total Entertainment; we were stuck in Australia for what would have been our stay in Thailand. Thai Air agreed to ship us out on another airline to Greece which was the next stop of our trip. Only it had to wait until when we were supposed to arrive there. We couldn't stray far from the airport due to the circumstance and needing to be available to fly out at any time. We did get to watch the premier of the movie Austrailia, as well as go for many runs. One run in particular lasted 3 hours!!! We ran from one end of a bay down the beach to the other end of the bay.



Extra thanks to the Clark Family, Amber, Andrew, for your their hospitality.
.