We rented the house from an old hippie lady. A bug-infested shithole, but lots of fun.


The front of the house is behind all of that foliage. Every morning, we'd wake up to the sound of kookaburras in the trees, which sounded a lot like monkeys.



The fam! From left: Steve (Scottish), Kenny (Scottish), Graham (English), Lindsay (Canadian), me, Carol (Canadian), Kari (Canadian), and Mike (Canadian).
(photo by Neil)



Neil taunts a spider. Not nice.



Neil nurses a spider bite.



Steve ponders breast reduction.
(photo by Kenny)



At the house.



The boys!



Kenny, Mike, and Neil.



The girls!



Carol, Kari, and Anat in bed. Woohoo!



Neil, Kari, Carol, and Kenny.



Neil sniffs Kenny's pit.



Playing Graham's card game.



Part of the game was Truth or Dare.



Part of the game was animal impressions. Kenny does his baby elephant. Pretty tame, Kenny.



A "caged animal" emerges from the kitchen!



The casualties.



Come back to bed, Kenny.

From: Jeff Nyveen To: my friends and family Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2000 04:49:25 -0400 Subject: Fun Fun Fun Haven't had a chance to write because, frankly, I've been too busy having fun. Monday morning, I took a train to a friend's place to drop of one of my three very heavy bags. The train went over the Harbour Bridge and through the hilly residential suburbs of North Sydney, which reminded me a lot of San Diego. Then back to King's Cross to meet Victoria and board the big, green Oz Experience bus. The bus had about 50 people on it, and I sat down next to a guy named Lindsay (poor guy) from Toronto, who looks like Robert Urich. A quick show of hands revealed that most people were from the UK, and most of the rest were from Canada. Most people are between 20 and 30 years old, some couples but a lot of people travelling alone. As soon as I got on the bus, I started meeting people. We have a lot of interesting characters on the bus. Graham is from the UK. He looks like Sting and always has something to say. Neil is an English guy whose teeth look uncannily like Arnold Schwarzenegger's. Anat is a small Israeli girl who had a golf ball-sized tumor removed from her brain six months ago. Mike is from Toronto and owns a swimming pool company. Patrick is an English bastard who is experiencing the trip through the viewfinder of his camera and takes pride in the fact that the prototype for the Sydney Harbour Bridge was built in his hometown. And then there are Stella and Kirsty, two lesbians who we mugging down right next to me the entire time they were on the bus. Victoria has turned out to be one of the quiet ones. Clarke (pronounced CLARK-ee), a young Australian guy, introduced himself as our bus driver and tour guide and immediately began spouting off historical facts about Sydney. Apparently Paul Hogan was discovered when, as a rigger (maintenance guy), he saved a man's life on the Harbour Bridge. Clarke is a great host. Very knowledgeable and lots of fun. We're never on the bus for more than 2 hours at a time, making frequent stops at lookouts, water holes, and eating places. He's an expert at maneuvering that huge bus along cliffs and around tight corners. And while we're on the bus, we play games like Windshield Bug Lotto, Bingo, and "Which Side of the Bus Can Come Up with the Most Condoms in Thirty Seconds?." The Oz Experience tour so far has been a blast. Almost everything is already planned for us, which makes it a lot easier. We're seeing all the cool stuff that a Greyhound bus wouldn't have stopped for. And we have the freedom to get off the bus and stay a any of our stops for as long as we want. We get Oz Experience discounts on almost everything we do. After leaving Sydney, we took the highway inland towards the Great Dividing Range and stopped at a cafe after a couple of hours. I had a steak sandwich and some Jungle Juice (tastes like fruit punch and wine mixed together). I then introduced myself to Kari and Carol, two girls from near Vancouver, and they introduced me to their two Scottish friends, Steve and Kenny. Kari looks just like Andie McDowell, only younger and, um, more fit. Steve and Kenny are hilarious. Hard to understand sometimes, but fun to listen to with their accents. That afternoon, we stopped at Nundle, a small sheep town with a population of about 300, and parked the bus at a farm called the Dag Inn. We met the locals, who told us a little bit about the region and the sheep-farming industry. Then we met Mickey, an older guy who has been shearing sheep locally for 30 years. He gathered up about 50 sheep with the help of his sheepdog, affectionately named "Head." Then into the barn for a little sheep-shearing demonstration. Clarke told us on the way there that Mickey was famous for his haircuts, and while we were all standing in the barn, Mickey asked if anybody wanted one. Guess who raised his hand? I did, and got my head shaved. You got it. After Mickey finished, everyone started congratulating me and rubbing my head. Apparently, I got a lot of respect for that. That evening, they turned the mess hall into a dance club. They turned on the music and turned off the lights, and everyone on the bus got drunk together. Then they lowered a foam-covered barrel from the rafters, which they called the Bucking Wild Sheep (the Nundle equivalent of a mechanical bull). The barrel had a rope attached to each corner, and once you got on and secured yourself the best you could, the locals would tug the ropes and try to throw you off. Guess who stayed on the sheep the longest? Yup. They had me chug a bottle of wine and then ride one more time and then gave me a T-shirt. They asked me where I was from, and I said Texas. That's why they think I won the contest. For the rest of the night, everyone called me "Texan boy." If only they knew that I have never ridden a bull (or a sheep) before. Then we had a drunken push-up contest in the middle of the dance floor. Guess who won that one? After all this, everybody knew my name. I became the hero of the bus. Cora, a Canadian girl with shoulders like Natrone Means, started bitching that she was on the sheep longer than me. She demanded my T-shirt but I politely told her no. I then offered to buy her a drink because I felt bad, and she told me that if I was buying it for her because I felt bad, and not because I really wanted to, she wasn't interested. At that point I totally blew her off and she has been giving me dirty looks since then. The next day we drove further inland and stopped at McDonald's for lunch. The billboard said it was 44° C, which by my approximation is about 120° F. It only gets hotter as we go north up the coast. The bugs are also getting worse. Flies and enormous roaches and spiders are everywhere. Then off to Tamworth, the country music capital of Australia. Felt at home for a few minutes. Then off to Bingara, another small town on the Gwydir River. We had a few drinks in the pub and had a pool contest. Kari and I partnered up (neither being any good at pool) and almost won the damn thing. We stayed in the pub that evening and then went for a beautiful horse ride along the coast in the morning. I was with a friendly horse named Eric, and Eric cantered along the river while I snapped pictures. We stopped the horses along the river and went for a swim. We took turns holding onto the horses tail while it galloped through the river. Great fun. Last night, we arrived in Byron Bay. All of the hostels were booked up, so Clarke hooked a group of us up and got us a private house to rent for a week. It should be quite an experience. No AC, lots of bugs. The address is 6 Cemetery Road. Our landlady is an old, wrinkly, hippie lady, and her husband is about 20 years old. After dropping off all of our stuff, we took a walk to Byron Beach. It was nighttime, moonlight was bouncing off the water. There were a million stars in the sky above. It was amazingly beautiful and peaceful. A time for reflection. Yesterday I went skydiving. Don't ask me how it was because I blacked out at 5000 feet. Kari, Carol, Lindsay, the two lesbians on the bus, and I went to Byron Bay Skydiving and spent most of the afternoon waiting in the lobby. In small groups, they took us to get briefed and suited up. First it was Lindsay and the lesbians, then Kari and Carol. I was last and went alone. I hit my head on the wing 3 times trying to get into the plane. The ride up to 10,000 feet in our small Cessna was not nearly as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be. We flew out over the coast. We were all tandem skydiving, and I was diving with a guy named Guy. On the way up, Guy hooked up his gear to mine, and I sat there looking out the window. Then the door swung open, I placed my legs on the wheel strut, leaned back on Guy, and off we went. The first 5 seconds of freefall were exhilarating. My mouth dropped open and I didn't know whether to scream, cry, laugh, or shit in my diving suit. We flipped, spun, and dove. Guy reached his arm around to show me that we were at 6000 feet on his wrist altimeter. As we got lower, I could feel the air getting warmer. He then pulled the rip cord and the parachute popped open, slowing us down so dramatically that it felt like we were shooting back up. Then I started seeing stars. I leaned back and told guy that I wasn't feeling so good. My stomach started turning and I felt like I was going to puke right into the wind and into Guy's face. The sun was setting, and it was beautiful, so I took out the disposable camera that was strapped to my suit and did my best to snap a few pictures before I lost consciousness. Next thing I remember was Guy yelling into my ears to get my legs up about 10 feet from the ground. We plopped down, Guy unstrapped himself from me, and I laid down flat on the grass for about 5 minutes until I felt OK to get up. Turns out that some Swedish guy named Mats, who was also in the Cessna, had a video camera rigged to his helmet, and he caught part of my dive on tape. I'm going to have him make a copy for me. Woke up this morning to discover sunburn, bruises, scratches, and bug bites all over my body and a welt from the plane wing on my bald head. All this fun is beating me up. Neil, who is terrified of spiders and is sleeping on a mattress on the floor, woke up this morning with a softball-sized welt on his left leg. He's off to the chemist to get a diagnosis. And Matt just removed a sand dollar-sized spider from our bathtub. Went surfing today. No Regrets. PS: I have had numerous problems connecting with Earthlink from down here, and their technical support has been expensive, unhelpful, and even rude at times. They don't bother responding to my question/complaint e-mails and both times I called today, the automated recording gave me an estimated hold time of over 30 minutes. I plan to discontinue my service with them as soon as I get home and just wanted to spread the word. Jeff

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