The Surf Shack

Woke the first morning in Evans Head feeling good and elated to be in an entirely different place. I found out from the guys that John (our host) only provided accommodation and not food, which was definitely surprising because that wasn't stated in his profile, but I was told we can use the kayaks, paddle boards, and surfboards so that kinda made up for it. I met John who came down to tell us what the day looked like, and he was very straightforward and to the point and told us exactly what we needed to do (the guys obviously already knew). This is the first host I've stayed with who lives a totally separate life. He lives upstairs with his family, and we aren't to go up there unless it's an emergency. Kind of cool at the same time though, because we all have our own space to hangout.

Me and Malcom were on the first shift, where he'd show me how to do everything. All the work here is simply to rent out different goodies to people like kayaks, paddle boards, and surfboards near a popular campground that is just up from the house. John has a trailer with everything in it that he drops off, and then we rotate shifts just chillin by the stand doing whatever we want. There were two kayaks that needed to be brought up to the shack, so instead of carrying them me and the Swedish dude put em down in our literal backyard and went up the river. On the sand was a small army of tiny crabs that had shiny blue shells, like stained glass, that scattered away burrowing into the sand becoming invisible in a matter of seconds. So cool!

Such a spot to work, if you'd even call it that. Life is goooood. Me and Malcom just hungout and talked for a few hours, then I went to go shopping for some food, and would return when they were closing up shop. At the local store up the street, which I skateboarded to, I bought eggs, butter, brown rice, onions, peas, oats, coconut milk, bananas, and milk that would last me for the next five days. It cost me 35 AU. Not too shabby.

I took a lil nap in the afternoon, helped close up shop, and then the rest of the night was free. Had some great conversation with the guys. Malcom has a summer home in the Archipelago Islands off the coast of Sweden that made me think damn there is truly an unlimited amount of places to explore in this world. Laurence grew up in London and has been on the road for some time now, traveling all over Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan with some buddies, and then came to Australia alone.

As the sun was setting, eating my brown rice with onions, peas, butter, and coconut milk, Laurence said (in his English accent of course), "you gotta see this man!" I went outside and above me, covering the sky, were thousands and thousands of seagull sized bats that were flying over to the nearby forest to forage for wild fruit. Wow. I've never seen anything like it.