Day 2 – Home and Away

After the doom and gloom of Conor’s blog yesterday (what was he on about), today was a lot brighter.It was the day that I had looked forward to for a very long time. After years of watching Home and Away and growing up with these characters (who also helped us relax in between lecturers), we would finally get to visit Summer Bay. It is amazing how people’s perceptions of a place change after a good night’s sleep and some good weather. Yesterday we were tired and cranky after our flight from New Zealand and the weather wasn’t great but waking up to the Sydney sun was a welcome change. We got some free breakie in the hostel and headed to the bus stop to catch our ride to Palm Beach, which is the name of the famous Home and Away beach. Whilst waiting for the bus we met a Cork man named John who was headed in the same direction as us. Funnily enough he had been in Sydney for 4 months and today was the first time he was going to head to Palm Beach…some Home and Away fan he is!!! It was 1hr 40mins to Palm Beach from Sydney central but the journey went fairly quick talking to John about his Australia experiences. He has been in Australia for 8 months and in this time he has been all around and worked on farms, labouring…you name it! He gave us tips about accommodation and told us (in that reassuring Cork accent) “ah you’ll be grand lads”, there is nothing better than hearing this from one of our own.

Finally we hit Palm Beach and it really did exceed our expectations. I was blown away (that’s such a corny phrase but I was!!)! We were living the dream (if only Kieran Costello was here), walking on the beach that we had seen on the TV for so many years. The beach that great characters such as Mr Stewart, Pippa, Irene, Chloe, Steven etc … had walked on, ran on, pondered their problems and made life changing decisions on. The sand was golden and the waves stunning. We walked along the beach at a snails pace to take in the scenery and posed for numerous photos before going to the Surf Club to get some much needed food (oh how I have wanted to say that for so many years). It was really cool sitting down outside the surf club eating our hot dogs and discussing past episodes. I don’t care what anyone says but deep down everyone still watches home and away and remembers all the episodes!! The place was very empty with less than fifty people to be seen. A lot of the activity took place in the water where a few kite surfers were doing their thing and pulling off some spectacular flips. Kite surfing looks class but I think we will learn to surf normally first before trying it with a kite. We’ll do well to get on a surf board never mind go in the water with it!! The calm feeling in the air just makes you so relaxed here and it is a completely different world to that of Sydney’s CBD. We saw numerous other Home and Away set locations and relaxed by a mini harbour and discussed how great it would be to rent a boat for a day and just chill. It is cheap enough to do this aswell. We might even buy one when we retire!! The next objective was to go swimming in the glorious waters that Palm Beach has to offer. Home and Away has offered us some great views in the past of Hayley, Shannon, Matilda etc ...with their perfect tans and bikini’s but now it was time for four white as sheets (with ridiculous farmer tans) Irish lads to do their thing. Conor decided to relax in the sun so Tom, Mike, John and I ran in and tackled the waves. John wasn’t far off as white as we were so we were all in the same boat! The water felt so good and with that we headed back to the city centre and said goodbye to John who we will more than likely see around Sydney again. After a hectic day we headed to the Cinema to see the latest Bond film which wasn’t great. I bitched that Pierce Brosnan was a much better James Bond than Daniel Craig and would pull more women. After a long and heated debate we fell asleep no doubt all dreaming that we will be starring as the next James Bond.

Closer each day,

Gary