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Published: April 20th 2009
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At Brisbane airport I reunited with my elusive-until-now chap, Neil, aka, ginge, and we took the airtrain (14 dollars) to Roma St station then caught the good old greyhound to Byron Bay, via Surfers, where we collected Geen and Paul.
We booked into our own little apartment in the Outrigger Complex - another 2 whole weeks of luxury instead of hostel dwelling.
Byron Bay is a proper little surf town and exactly what you picture Australia to be like, with a beautiful long beach, full of surfers and lovely little shops, boutiques and restaurants. And, not one McDonalds or KFC to be found. Lovely. They also have a number of good bars, including the Beach bar, Railway bar and the Great Northern pub, which became our local. There was usually a duff band playing in one of them which always enticed us in.
Although we managed to get on the beach a few times, the weather wasn't all that conducive so we decided one day to take a tour down to a place called Nimbin. Absolutely hilarious! We booked our tour with a company called 'The Happy Coach' (those of you who know about Nimbin can put 2 and 2 together
about what this implied . . ) and so on that morn we parked ourselves outside our pick up point - which was the Police Station - and eagerly awaited our transport. To our not wholly unexpected surprise, the beige charabanc that was our bus for the day coughed on up and alighting from it was this apparition consisting of a shoeless, dreadlocked hippie by the name of Fred who was to be our driver for the day. In the passenger seat sat an equally dreadlocked and shoeless throwback by the name of Wally, whose role is still somewhat unclear, he having appeared to come along for the ride.
With a few jokes told by Fred that kind of set the pace for the day, we were off, bumping along country roads to tunes such as "The only thing left on my list to do is your mom" and other such tripe imposed on us by the hippie twosome.
Before we pulled into Nimbin, Fred became all serious and explained what we should expect when we arrived in the town, namely the offer of cookies and mushrooms, and we're not talking your common or garden biscuit or vegetable here either.
Suitably scared/ intrigued, we arrived and yep, within about 30 seconds of getting off the bus, we were approached by a dealer trying to flog us magic mushrooms. Needless to say, we hastened on, the draw of the tiedye t-shirts, handmade shoes and hemp bags being much more alluring!
Nimbin is like a town that is stuck in 1968 - loads of velvet bedecked. beaded individuals stinking of patchouli oil . . well, it wasn't that bad but you get the drift. Nimbin's shops all seem to be based around the premise of legalising grass and I don't think there was one that didn't sell some kind of drug paraphenalia or other. The Nimbin Museum was a funny little place, again, everything in it hemp related, but we all loved the concept that if you liked the museum, you dropped 2 dollars into a bucket at the front and if you didn't, you didn't bother. Very laidback.
Back in Byron we agreed that a vigorous walk was necessary to stir us out of our Nimbin induced lethargy so we set off for the Byron Bay Lighthouse, apparently the most easterly point in Australia. After a few diversions having got lost,
we eventually got there and it was well worth the views from the top. There was a fantastic long beach called Tallows Beach which appeared to be deserted that we viewed along the way.
The weather still being a bit rubbish, Neil and I decided to hire a car and went visiting some of the places along the east coast again. First stop was Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, for which I didn't have high hopes after Australia Zoo but it was a pleasant surprise to find that this place, although smaller, had loads of wildlife and an altogether more natural feel about it, instead of the whole cashing-in-on-Steve-Irwin feel of Austalia Zoo. The best bit of the Sanctuary though was that we got to hug a koala! Our koala was called Happy and stunk to high heaven but it was worth it, he was so cute and his fur so soft although he was very heavy.
On the way back home from our day trip, we stopped off to play a game of crazy golf and much to my embarrassment, I fell over a little hump and bashed my ribs and hand on my golf club. Think I am possibly the
only person in the world to have sustained an injury during such a sedate game.
Back in Byron we met up with our good friend Diane who we first met in Melbourne and our last night was spent feeding the 5,000 . . .well it felt like that as we had possibly the biggest bbq I have ever experienced with the 5 of us gnawing our way through enough meat and potato wedges to last a week. And so it was that we bid a fond farewell to lovely Byron Bay and got back on the greyhound for our next destination, Brisbane.
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