Just a quick post to let you know where I am in the world at the moment! After getting back to England from my wonderful week in Mallorca I had planned to fly straight back out to Australia. However, I had by this point started to worry about how likely it was that I could immediately find myself a full-time job on my return to Oz (which I needed to have guaranteed in order to fund the second half of my trip).

After the initial shock of my grand entrance had worn off, I settled into what was my second ever holiday with Oliver and his family. It was so exciting to see Oli, especially after such a positive reaction from him to my surprise. We kicked the celebrations off in style with a gorgeous meal at Tahini, a sushi restaurant in Puerto Portals, with Oliver’s parents that evening.

When my mother and I decided that it would be quite a nice idea to surprise my boyfriend, Oliver, by turning up in Mallorca for his sister’s wedding, halfway through our time apart, we definitely failed to recognise quite how much deception this surprise was going to involve.

After my time on the Gold Coast I headed back down to Sydney for my flight home. I arrived at 8am on yet another overnight bus, one month after I first entered Australia. I had booked a cheap hostel on Hostel World because it claimed to have an early check-in option, from 9am.

After a week exploring Sydney I felt ready to move on. So I booked a ticket up the East Coast to Byron bay and set off from Sydney that evening, on an overnight greyhound bus. Thankfully there was free wifi on the bus and I managed to get two seats to myself with plenty of room to snooze. I set off feeling quietly optimistic that once I arrived in Byron I could relax for a few days, before being handed a work-for-accommodation job at one of Byron’s many hostels. This was where I was wrong.