happy new year!

i took this picture the first day we arrived when we were walking around circular quay and the opera house. such a cool area-- cafes, people, beautiful scenery and an incredible harbor. one of my favorite places in the whole world. if i were to have a wider lens, you could see the harbor bridge just to the left. that kind of gives you some perspective.

we are currently in surfers paradise up the eastern coast. we left byron bay earlier this morning.

new years eve in byron was pretty cool, nothing too over the top crazy. they put a strict alcohol ban down in the city due to last years debauchery which was kind of stupid. it was basically a bunch of people crowded in the beach running around half naked screaming. very different from last years festivities in rome-- no firebombs to speak of which was nice.

new years day was the real interesting day. bryan and i were looking for a car as mentioned previously. we wanted to go to this hippie town called nimbin to check things out and we thought maybe we could find a car on the way there. turns out when we got to nimbin we saw a big advert for a guy trying to sell his car. we gave him a ring and traevlled up hells half acre to find the damn place. adrians car almost exploded trying to climb the hill to this guys house, but when we finally got there a 1986 white volvo station wagon sat just glowing there. the guy that owned it was a real interesting fellow. he was an artist from zimbabwe, his wife a kiwi. together they are complete greenies-- they planted all the trees at their place, organic farm, etc. real interesting to talk to and stuff. they were both stoned out of their minds while we were talking to them, pretty funny.

we bargained the guy and his wife down to 1800 from 2500 aussie bucks-- with full expectation that we can get rid of it when we get back to sydney. this thing is an absolute MONSTER though. we have named it CHUG cause this thing is a hoss. donald trump would have gladly used it in '86 to tour the coutryside comfortably. i really think we could run over a horse and this thing would jsut keep purring. its really a cool car. so we plan to take chug for about a 9000 kilometer spin around australia. just today we drove it to surfers paradise and the thing is a complete champ. and becasue it is about 50 feet in length (ok i exaggerated), sleeping in it is better than any bed i have slept in in a while. so this has been kind of fun.

we are going to take it up as far north as townsville and then over in to the outback to uluru. from there we wanna head south to adelaide through the grampian mountains and then up and around the southern coast to melbourne. after a stint in melbourne we are going to head back to sydney. both bryan and i are looking very forward to this little adventure.

other than that, planning to head up to brisbane tonight after a short beach stint here in surfers. its real touristy and such here so we dont feel real hard pressed to stay.

while racking in some car time we have been listening to Triple J a lot (one of australias big radio stations). by all means check it out on their website, maybe get a streaming feed or something. the programming is amazing, very little commercial, we heard danger doom the other day (got to check that out, jeff-- pretty sweet stuff) all the way to ambient stuff and even obscure indie stuff back home that gave me a run for my money. so thats pretty nice for the road.

i have included some photos in this batch.. one obviously of chug, the other of the campfire we managed to make while sleeping on the beach last night. i am excited at the thought of not sleeping with all the damn critters at night. bryan, adrian and damian had me in a complete stupor last night when they started going on about all the snakes. jesus.

more to come with some time. i feel like i am in the midieval (sp?) times with this damn dinasour of a computer right now which is sort of prohibiting the uploading of more pics. bryan has other ones on his blog, so you can check those out as well. bryansack.blogspot.com