Sure I may as well begin with a bang! The following story isn’t really mine to tell but having consulted with all parties involved, I’ve been given the green light to share this epic tale.
Our journey begins in the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I had just spent a fantastic two weeks in Perth and travelled from there over the bush to Brisbane. My friends Barry and Ruaidhri arrived in Brisbane three hours after I landed all the way from Dublin and London respectively.
While in Brisbane, Ruaidhri introduced us to his cousin Tadhg and his girlfriend Niamh. They decided to join us for the first few stages of our east coast road trip before flying back to Ireland after spending time living in New Zealand.
We hit it off straight away and were delighted to have them on board. After our second night in Brisbane we hired a car and set off south for the Gold Coast, about an hours drive with Ruaidhri at the wheel. Before coming on this trip Ruaidhri was under the impression that I could also drive and that we could share the burden.
I could drive alright but didn’t have my full licence at the time (I do now). As a result, the rental car company wouldn’t insure me. Whoops! Just the 1700km for the poor lad to drive between here and Melbourne.
Anyway I digress, we arrived at our hostel on a scorching hot sunny day. Barry, Ruaidhri and I ended up in a 4 bed dorm with a Chinese guy called Andy. He was about as eccentric a person as I’ve ever met and that’s saying something!
I couldn’t understand his accent too well but from what I gathered he was some sort of car salesman. It later transpired that I had indeed heard him wrong and that it was his job to recruit European men to come back to China and dance in cages at his nightclub. There was no follow up questions from me after hearing that!!!
Tadhg and Niamh were sharing a larger dorm with another couple and a shifty looking Australian woman.
We went out the first night there and it was wild! The nightlife was like Harcourt Street in Dublin on All Ireland final night, St Patrick’s day and New Years Eve all rolled in to one. Mayhem!
Barry and I got a taxi back to the hostel together at about 4am after he had finally managed to escape the clutches of Alize, the French girl who took a shining to him outside the club. Little did we know, that would not be the last time we would encounter her but that’s for another time.
It was on our return to the hostel that we met Bobbi the nocturnal New Zealander. She was also staying there and revealed to us that she stays up at night because she doesn’t really like people and there’s less of them around at night.
I love meeting these interesting people who all have different outlooks and perspectives on life. Bobbi was just doing her own thing and she seemed happy.
Now for the part you’ve all been waiting patiently for… the Thief! The following morning I awoke to the news that Niamh and Tadhg’s personal belongings had been ransacked. Both of their wallets/purses, Tadhg’s brand new phone and worst of all, Niamh’s passport were all taken.
The entire situation was made all the more disastrous by the fact that the pair of them were due to fly home in three days time. Obviously this would be impossible with no passport.
From checking her banking app, Niamh was able to figure out that 30 dollars had been spent from her account at 6:30 that morning in the Supermarket across the road from the hostel. That was our first lead.
It was obviously somebody who was staying at the hostel with us but who could it be? The list of suspects was narrow enough, I doubted either Bobbi or Andy would be capable of such a nefarious deed…well maybe Andy!
The clues were mounting up against the dodgy looking Australian girl who was sharing the room with them. Incidentally, she was nowhere to be seen since any of us woke up. All of her stuff was gone from the room too.
Both Tadhg and Niamh presented the hostel owner with the information about the transaction at the supermarket. He was a really by the book sort of a guy but he eventually relented and agreed to show them CCTV footage of the reception area from around that time.
After a minute or two of spooling through the tape came the breakthrough. At about 6:35 AM, who came strolling through the main door armed with bags from the supermarket, only the dodgy Aussie from their dorm. Gottcha! It was our own version of the Scooby Doo moment where they pull off the mask.
That was all the evidence we needed. The hostel owner refused to give them any further information on the thief though. He said that he sent an email to every other hostel in Australia with a photo of her car reg and driving licence. Sure what good was that to us?
Enter for the first time one of the heroes of this tale. Mick, from good old county Louth, also happened to be working at the hostel. He had heard about our situation and like every good Irish person, he felt compelled to assist his compatriots, even if it meant bending the rules.
He gave the guys a copy of the picture of the thief’s driving licence and car reg to bring to the cops. He also gave them her phone number. The guy came through big for us.
While Tadhg and Niamh went to the cop shop with their evidence, Barry, Ruaidhri and I decided to take some of the edge off the day by going to one of the local theme parks. The two lads were keen on Warner Bro’s World but I, as a veteran of many trips to Orlando, insisted that Sea World would be better.
We were looking to go somewhere that had a pool so we could swim. Just to be sure that Sea World had such facilities, I asked the woman in the ticket booth and she confirmed as much.
After paying 95 dollars each to gain entry I had one final question for her. ‘What time are the dolphin and orca shows on at?’ “We don’t have any shows, we have absolutely no affiliation with Sea World in America, its an entirely different company. Now could you move on please and stop holding up the line” was her reply.
Your damn right it had no affiliation with the American Sea World. If the one in Orlando was Universal Studios, this place was the equivalent of Bray seafront.
Neither of the lads were saying it but I could tell they were raging with me for bringing them there. The final straw was when we made it to the swimming area. Water up to our ankles, mushroom waterfalls and loads of kids running amok. It was at this moment that we all realised that I had inadvertently brought us to a kiddies theme park!
The Spongebob Squarepants simulator ride should have been a giveaway before that. We decided to cut our losses and return to the hostel to see how the other two were getting on tracking down the thief. They had had no luck with the police unfortunately, who seemed apathetic towards the whole situation.
The outlook was bleak at this stage. Niamh had already forked out on a flight to Sydney to get an emergency passport from the Irish embassy in order to travel home. We were down but the final bell had not yet tolled.
Ruaidhri took it upon himself to try and call the phone number that Mick had given us for the thief. We all sat and listened in anticipation for her to answer.
In fairness to Ruaidhri he gave a masterclass. She answered and he left her in no doubt that we knew what she had done. He was firm but fair and appealed to her better nature to at the very least return Niamh’s passport to us. She continued to strenuously deny any wrongdoing though.
The call came to an abrupt end with no positive outcome. We went down to the beach at Surfer’s Paradise with our tails between our legs. The swim and the game of footie was a welcome distraction.
When we got back to the car Ruaidhri noticed that he had received a text message. It was the thief. She sent us a location that she wanted to meet us at and she would give us back the passport. His plea had obviously worked.
Alarm bells started ringing in my head. ‘No way lads, this has ambush written all over it. Who’s to say she won’t be waiting there with her mates to rob the rest of us.’ If this was Scooby Doo, I was very much Shaggy.
After our Sea World fiasco, the rest of them were less inclined to listen to my tuppence worth so they agreed to meet her at the location she had suggested.
It was a pub about a mile from the hostel. Barry and I waited in the car. We were both worried for our friends.
Minutes later Ruaidhri, Tadhg and Niamh emerged triumphantly from the pub, Niamh brandishing her recovered passport as if she was Michael Murphy lifting aloft the Sam Maguire cup for Donegal in 2012.
The thief hadn’t met them at the pub, she left the passport on the steps outside and the barman had luckily found it and taken it in. There was such a sense of relief that we had gotten some form of happy ending. If we thought that our drama for the day had ended,then we were very much mistaken.
We genuinely could not believe our eyes when we returned to the hostel. Standing there bold as brass at reception was the thief. Incredible!!
She had her back turned to us and the receptionist who saw our shocked expressions made the shush sign to us. He had already alerted the police.
Enter our second Irish hero. A girl from Cork was also working at the hostel and she noticed that the thief had returned. She let rip at her (read the following in your best Cork accent for full effect) ‘You’ve got some neck coming back here girly after what you did. Give everything back to them now!!’
So the Cork girl marched the thief back up to the dorm and demanded she hand over all of the stolen possessions. Tadhg got his phone and wallet back and Niamh got her purse back. What a result!!
The tension was at fever pitch. We were waiting on the police to arrive before she had a chance to escape forever. She ran out into the car park to get into her own car and make a break for it. By chance, there was a delivery driver blocking the entrance with his van.
She rolled down her window and screamed, ‘If you don’t move your facking van, I’m going to ram straight into the side of it!!’
As you can see from the above picture (one of my all time favourites), Barry was enthralled by the level of drama.
The driver moved the van and away she went. The police didn’t even come in the end. What a day! Thankfully Tadhg and Niamh had recovered everything that was stolen from them and we never heard from the thief again.
It’s certainly a day and an experience that will live long in the memory.
I’m going to try and make this as un-boring an experience for you as possible. Despite the fact that I have a degree in journalism, I don’t write that often, if at all.
Ben's Big Adventure 
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