Byron Bay - Amazing

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Not much to say about the bus journey from Sydney to Byron, it was 14 hours long and not that much to see really.  However, Byron, was a different story.

Let me just say this now,  Byron Bay is AMAZING, everything about it.  The people, the scenery, the weather, the bars, the live music, everything is 10/10.

It would be here that I would be doing my PADI course at Sundive, the dive company which was located right next to a cape Byron YHA, the hostel I was staying in.  

I had done some research through and old uni mate who was a dive master in Indonesia to find out where n the east coast of Australia  is the best place to dive.  The common response was Sundive.  The teacher - Liz Sealey was excellent as were the facilities, the rest of the staff and the people I was training with.

The first two days were spent in the pool getting used to the equipment and the other two days were spent in the water at Julian Rocks Marine Park.  Julian Rocks has an abundance of life teaming beneath the waters surface.  We got to see wollygongs (yeah don't ask!), leopard sharks, green and loggerhead turtles and tones and tones of fish.

In the evenings in Byron, we had a couple of decent nights out and I got to know my future traveling companions Debs and Caz (met them previously on the Blue Mountain tour) better.  

Debs and Caz met each other at University in Glasgow and have been great friends ever since.  It's obvious they are very close and I am really happy I am getting to travel with them for a bit.  We intend to do Fraser Island and Whitsundays together.

Back to the diving, at the end of the week we got to take our PADI test I did well and along with the completion of the open water dives on the Saturday (we couldn't launch on two afternoons due to too many surfers in the water and the tide being too shallow) I was a certified 18 meter open water diver 😉

I intend to do a dive on the boat off the whitsundays and then probably my advanced open water course when I get to Cairns. 

I absolutely adored Byron and wish I could have stayed longer but it is a place that can really suck you in.  One of the mornings I woke to go for a swim before the dive course.  As I was coming back n t the main road, there was a hippy older guy praying with flowers.  I asked him what he had been doing and he said how he was worshipping the arrival of the sun and then went on to day how he had come to Byron in the early 70s to come for a holiday.  40 years later he was still there.

He said to me "Once you come here, you never leave". I could see is point, maybe in another life I would have stayed 😉

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