Luke's Story

Luke is studying a business degree at RMIT University and lives for fast cars, fast money, and long nights partying. Live rock concerts are also his passion. Luke joined the Schoolies Youth Reference Group to help make sure that future schoolies not only party hard, but party safe!

Schoolies at Surfers

Schoolies. It was something we had planned together as a group since Year 10. Surfers Paradise was our destination, the Schoolies Central of Australia. We saved up our dollars for many months, purely for the first week in December. For some of us it was our first flight. We were staying at a hotel right near the centre of the action.

From the moment we jumped onto the plane, 'travellers' were being consumed. We had little sleep, going to bed really late along with getting up early due to the sun rising much earlier than Melbourne's.

The whole time we felt really safe, due to the high security of our hotel, and many police patrolling the streets and beach at night times.

Schoolies highlights

The focus of our trip was Evolution, the schoolies-only drug and alcohol free dance party. It was an awesome night.

We also did the theme parks, having an absolute ball at Dreamworld and Wet 'n' Wild. The beach was great place too; catching a few waves, kicking the footy.

We met many other schoolies travellers, becoming good friends with them, some we still chat with to this day. They came from all over Australia. Living off junk food was the norm for us, as we only had shared cooking facilities, and quite frankly none of us has any cooking talent. Although, we did manage to get a decent feed at restaurants a couple of nights.

Hiring motorised scooters was also a highlight for us, zooming around for hours on the streets of the Paradise.

Not once did any of us miss our parents and siblings back in Melbourne. The day we left for home was quite sad, and we slept the whole way home.

I'm glad I took the trip, despite my parents at first being against it. One of the best weeks of fun I've had in my life -  a once in a lifetime.

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