DAY 16
Week 3
TERRANORA (New South Wales, AUS)
Monday November 20th, 2006
TODAYS MILEAGE – 70 miles or 113 kilometres
TRIP MILEAGE – 3227 miles or 5193 kilometres
Weather forecast for the day – farqin' fabulous!!! 
You, know, its kind of tough waking up at Philthy & Jodie's at 6 in the morning, grabbing a cup of Joe and looking out across the valley to the ocean 5 miles (8 kilometres) down the road.
For me, it's some of the simplest things that I get the most pleasure from. Wether it's sitting on Fluxy & Sonia's huge covered porch reading a paper, sunrises on Philthy and Jodi's deck, warm sand between the toes on a beach, or the sounds of kids laughing - it matters not to me.
I had to do a bit of running around in order to get Philthy & Jodi's house hooked up via wireless. This entailed cruising around the Gold Coast from Tweed Heads (New South Wales) to Southport (Queensland) and it wasn't hard to draw some comparisons to when I drove from Key West (Florida) up the East Coast of the United States.
The first thing I noticed was the lush, green vegetation here as opposed to the low, mangrove scrub like plants in Florida. The high rises are prevalent in both areas, but it seems that the Aussies have put more thought into the low–set buildings by using different materials, colors and textures. The architecture, while modern, has a tropical "lived in" feel rather than a concrete box. The beach sand is completely different in that over here it has a soft, sugary powder type that is warm, as opposed to a hard pack grainy type that is fairly cool to the touch. It could be the Pacific Ocean versus the Atlantic Ocean???
The evening was spent down at the Touch Rugby fields watching both Sianne and Kasie having a run around while we got eaten alive and carted off by the mozzies.
• KIRRA BEACH ~ (Queensland, AUS)
• BILAMBIL ~ Touch Rugby (New South Wales, AUS)