Last Day of Winter!!!

Awesome! I have had two last days of winter spent strapped into a snowboard in one year. Almost seems like a magic trick...I have been known to pull rabbits out of hats. I am in Jindabyne, NSW, a small mountain town on the south end of Lake Jindabyne. Staying with old mate Grover midweek and then for the weekend I couchsurfed with Becca on the other side of town. This is due to the fact that Grover does not pay rent and the people whose ski condo he lives at only come on the weekends. So to not impose I just act like a kid with divorced parents and go spend the weekend elsewhere. Got to snowboard 3 days so far, poached 2 and clipped a ticket in the carpark today as the weather was shitty and I knew people would be leaving early.

Ah, where has this past month taken me. About half the East coast of Australia, that's where. Pure hitch hiking at its finest, with public transport only paid for getting into and out of Sydney. It went like this :
From Moloolaba to Gold Coast for 7 out of 9 days of good to sick surf with the Ecuadorians. Surfing multiple sessions per day, eating, and chilling out on the leather backyard couch reading this weird but captivating Dostoyevsky book, "The Brothers Karamazov" (I'll review it when finished, its a long one). Surf videos were watched to stoke us out for the sessions...I didn't come out of any tubes but Henk and Ricky sure did, cabrones.
Left Goldy and hitched down the coast to Nambucca heads to couchsurf with my man Doug...an elder who is very young at heart and enjoys his "ciggys". An eclectic pack rat living in a sort of jimmy rigged museum with treasures everywhere, and a bird feeder instead of a television to watch. Nambucca was a beautiful natural spot on the coast at the mouth of the Nambucca river, with the town on one side and a nature preserve on the other. There was a few waves breaking in the rivermouth and a right point just north of it. I didn't surf as there was no equipment to borrow. Doug and I had an enjoyable barbecue in the park after the aboriginals were done using the public barbecue, yup, public, free barbecue...genius!!!
Cruised down the coast 2 days later with Sydney as my destination to visit my old friend Ernesto, who lives in Manly, a northern coastal suburb...The bummer here was that as I was hitch hiking I was starting to feel quite ill and knew that I had a virus spreading throughout my body. A fever had set in by the evening and I was feeling downright lousy. I spent the weekend in bed, just eating fruits, and taking some echinacea and vitamin C....By Monday I was full strength again. Manly was a suburb with a beach, which I only surfed once on one of Ernesto's boards. My springsuit was not warm enough for the winter water temps, and then the waves went flat, so I guess that was a good thing. Ernesto worked all week so I entertained myself by reading and walking and eating alot, things I am really good at!
Trained out of Sydney to the south a good ways so Id have a better chance of hitching with my final destination being Jindy. I took my time and really went with the flow. Spending one night at the windiest rest stop in history. The next night I was in the beautiful sleepy little coastal town of Tathra, where I camped out on the rocky headland just a few feet above sea level, and awoke to a warm sun.
I made it to Jindy by the late afternoon and proceeded to party hard with Grover at the Banjo Paterson Inn, and Wednesday night is payday for the whole town so it definitely gets crazy. Hungover altitude headache snowboarding ensued the next day. I got radical for sure, bro.