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Published: June 16th 2006
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Surfers Paradise....
If you like that sort of thing. The Bling Coast & Skyscraper Paradise, Byron In The Rain, WARNING!, The Last Sessions, The Great Lakes, Tidying Up Loose Ends, Last Supper.
From Brisbane Betty takes us once more south along the Pacific Highway, and into the high rise concrete jungle of the Gold Coast. I can’t believe my first sight of this 150k stretch of beautiful beach on which a veracious infection of tower blocks has taken root. The development here is in Plague proportions, there are more concrete and glass towers than in Brisbane, maybe even Sydney, and there right on the beach.
In my opinion the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise is one of Australia and QLD’s biggest blunders (along with letting the UK test nukes in the desert when the prevailing winds blow towards a major population centre). Originally a massive sandy beach with a plethora of sand bar created long clean beach breaks aided by the prevailing offshore Sou’westers.
The area suffered from some high level corruption within the government and planning personnel, the fat cats managed to secure limitless development options right on the high water mark. By milking the Aisian tourist market the area exploded, and the blocks shot up.
Sadly the introduction of 100 story tower blocks all along the beach buggers up the off shore wind and solidifies the sand dunes that create the sand bars on which the good surf breaks. The result is that the local surf conditions have gone down hill rapidly and by 3:30pm the sun on the beach has set behind a block leaving beach lovers cold and moody.
We spend a few hours on the beach and lost in mega city, I spot a typical looking ozzy surfer, all hair, tan, body and ‘Like so righteous man, free, just me my board and the ocean…..’ the image is perfect except that his board sports a huge Coca-Cola logo, this pretty much sums up Surfers Paradise to me, foot down and on to…
Byron Bay! I’ve actually visited Byron before, a couple of years before for and a sunny family Christmas, I loved it then, so laid back but sooo trendy, the crustyies and the surfers, the chicks and princesses, the VW campers and Street Utes, and of course cape Byron and its fantastic selection of beaches.
This time though Black clouds smother every corner of the compass, we arrive
Tallows Beach.
Our kite spot at Byron. in drizzle, go to sleep in rain, get woken by Rain and by morning it’s torrential cats and dogs with electric strobeing and Zeus’s roar. But as you well know, it takes more than a little dampness to keep an Englishman down!
We kite Tallow’s beach on our first day, in an uncomfortably gusty southerly and grinding 14ft swell, I swear that I out ran some 3meter breakers, shouting at the wind ‘Come on dammit’ as white water looms over my head and my kite drops lazily back into the power zone. I would like to say that I caught some 3 meter waves, but in a fluky wind with this much swell and a brick shitting shore dump, I concentrated (very hard), on survival! At one point I jumped a breaking wave, trying to get out back. I didn’t quite make the height, the wash caught the tip of my board ripping it from my feet leaving me to dangle over the raging breakers, my legs kicking the air and a loud ‘bugger’ rising in my throat as my kite gently lowered me into the face of a double overhead barrel.
The next day with a break
WARNING!
Barnetts about! in the heavy cloud and heavier rain we make a road trip to the spectacular volcanic plug namely Mt Warning. At 1’153m and very vertical the distinctive shaped Basalt massive was named by Columbus to warn sailors of straying too close to shore. We hike up the sheer face in a few hours, it’s fascinating to see the fauna and foliage change as we ascend, the top few hundred meters lie in thick cloud and feature some rare cloud forest, all lichens, ferns, aerial roots, creepers and luscious mosses.
Mt Warning being the tallest point for at least 1000k picks up a lot of lightning, though I don’t think the 20 meter steel and copper lighting rod on the top helps much. Because of this and its significance it is a very spiritual place for the native aboriginal people. While we stand on the top the cloud swirls about the peak, offering misty windows onto the panorama below. At one point were in bright sunshine above the cloud layers, a minute later were in total white out, to slowly thin as the clouds lift and we finally see how high we are! ‘I can see the pub from here’.
Mt. WARNING!
View from the top. See the shadow of the mountain at the bottom of the pic! The next day the wind kicks off in a big way and its parcel force time on Byron’s Clerks beach. The swell is a little less than before being blow out buy a very fresh Nor’easter, gusting 20-35kts and at the limit of my abilities to hold down. With the tide low and a knave bit of flat water inside the breakers I try in vain to make the double back roll a reality. With squalls of horizontal rain, an angry grinding sea, gusty unpredictable wind and grey skies this feels a lot like Kitesurfing in England!
We finish the day after 4 and a half hours of pushing it and hit the pub to watch the nations team drag themselves uninspiring to a first round victory. Watching the Australia Japan match two days later in a country pub was fantastic, the ozzys are loving the World cup, they are convinced that the ‘Sockeroos’ are going to win! Got to love that optimism, and there will be tears for sure, nobody plays Brazil without them.
After an energetic four days in Byron it’s on to Forster and Australia’s own ‘Great Lakes’, Lake Myall and the sounding lakes
Lake Myall.
Our kite spot at the great lakes. are found in a very Welsh area of New South Wales. Rolling heavily eroded countryside mildly agricultural but heavily wooded with hardwoods and conifers covered slopes that drop into cool clear lakes. With the weather still against us we spend two dam days admiring the natural scenery of this area, and manage an evening kite on the wooded lakeside. VW campers and crusty trucks park up to watch the sunset in this glorious location, we both try in the increasingly fluky wind to pull some tricks for the audience.
Near the lakes is the spectacular Seal Rocks, an small seaside town quite inaccessible for NSW, and blissfully unspoilt, almost Cornish if it were still the 50’s. From here, with grimm inevitability we head back into Sydney, for my last day and night in Ozz.
We stay in the northern suburb of Dee Why, where if the wind were to get up I could get a last session in on the local beaches. The wind doesn’t get up, so we settle for a walk along the coast to North Head where we watch some surfers being towed into 4m bommie waves half a K out from Dee Why. The
Tieing up loose ends....
A quick photo stop at Ayers rock to complete the trip. Surfers look absolutely dwarfed by the waves they catch, and the speed they get up to is insane, the jet skis towing them in really have to move it to avoid the breakers.
The following day im on a 5pm departure so its to the Sydney fish market for my last taste of the fantastic Australian sea food I love so much. The market is fascinating, the diversity of their shell fish and crustations gets me very excited and we buy a few fresh Morton Bay Buggs. These weird looking aliens are somewhere between lobster and crab in both taste and look, we find a seafood shack buy the market that will cook our bugs for us and provide a suitable selection of Calamari, Baramundi, Prawns, Octopus and of course Chips!
I board QF31 with a tummy full of sea food and a head full of memories, Good Bye Australia.
Ill be back.
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