Week 46 Surfers Paradise to Byron Bay - OZ

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I had to change hotels for my last night in Surfers, which was OK but a bit of a waste as the room had a great wide balcony and it was raining hard in Paradise. What do you do when you are starving hungry on a wet day ? Easy, you go to Hard Rock Cafe for a burger and it was a great burger too. I mooched about town, loaded a blog edition and tried to find no-cost things to do. Its hard as this place is not really equipped for its 60 non-sunny days in the year if you don’t want to go to the theme parks.

The new hotel was just down the road from the bus station so the following morning it was an easy walk and the Greyhound bus took just an hour and a half to reach Byron Bay - so I have crossed the State line from Queensland into New South Wales. The other end was easy too with a flat walk to the apartments where I had rented a studio condo for a few days. The room was a good size with decent and clean kitchen equipment , a comfortable area with couch and TV, a double bed and a bathroom with a good shower with scalding hot water. The large sliding patio doors had a great view of a brick wall a few inches away, making the room a bit dark during the day, but at least it was private.

I walked up to the beach for a quick look but it was still a bit overcast and too chilly to sit on so I spent the day exploring the town. Its not large but there is quite a range of shops and some good cafes and restaurants, so I was kept amused and managed not to buy anything other than groceries (tip - Woolworths next to the tourist Info site is a fraction of the cost of the organic produce shops in town) and after stopping for a cheap plate of pasta on the way home, I had a relaxing night vegging out in front of the TV watching movies.

Byron sells itself as a hippy bohemian town but its a bit too polished and feels as if its a committee’s version of a cool town. There are some funky independent shops, but also highly priced boutiques and places selling designer yoga wear. Much of its income is from alternative mind and body therapies and you can get every part of you read, rebalanced or healed for some astonishingly high prices. There are plenty of places touting psychic tarot, life coaching, regression hypnotherapy, faith healing, clairaudient channelling and even heart-centering. Along with the yoga and rebalancing schools they have the widest range of therapies I have ever (never) heard of such as myofacial, craniosacral, kinesiology and if you fancy a pipe up your bottom this is the place to be with a massive choice of where to get your colon cleansed. You could go up to the hills to a wide range of different retreats or healing centres too. I just wanted a simple oil massage and to retreat to a sunny beach.

At last the sun was back and it was warm. I walked about 1km along the beach towards the Lighthouse promontory to a quieter beach called Clarkes and found a spot on the fine golden sand to park myself for a couple of hours. The sand is slightly more coarse in Byron Bay and not the ultra soft powder of further north, but its still very fine and gets everywhere. The area is famous as a surfing beach but luckily for me the waves were pathetic and easy to get out past the breakers, so I braved the chilly water a couple of times for a swim. There is a great cafe here with views over the ocean but it was packed by lunchtime so at 1pm I walked back to town and ate in Soulbowl opposite the Main beach, where I ended up eating most days. They did a range of soups, salads and great baked potato with a huge array of toppings that were all tasty. I wandered the town again searching for a reasonably priced massage, but even the special offers were above my budget.

In the afternoon I went to the tourist information to check out what was on offer and was disappointed to learn that many of the tours were not running for various reasons. It was a bit of a blow as there is no public transport to the places I wanted to visit inland, so stopped into a car hire place to check out their prices which sound reasonable to start with but get high when they finish adding on all the required extras. I retired to the pub to consider things. The pub is actually the large bar of a hotel occupying a wide corner plot opposite Main Beach with nice views over the grass to the sea. Its always busy and often hard to get a table so you are forced to perch on very tall stools at the high circular tables that are scattered around. Its hard to get onto the stools with dignity when you are short, but they do give even better views of the beach.

As the spit of land under the lighthouse is the most easterly point of Australia, the next day I had planned to get up before dawn and watch the sunrise but I fell back to sleep after switching off the alarm. I woke up two hours later but it was already light. Bugger. I got up anyway and was one of the earlybirds at the market that is held in the centre of Byron on the first Sunday on the month. It is a weekly market that moves on a circuit between 4 towns in the area and is quite large, with a good range of stalls. There was plenty of ready-made food to choose from and had stalls selling fresh produce but you had to move quickly as the locals were stocking up on fruit and veg and some places ran out stuff early. You could enter at either end but had to cross the railway to get there. I stopped for a few minutes to listen to a guy with a guitar sitting between the tracks playing. I guess (and hope) the trains are infrequent and give plenty of warning as it didn’t look the safest place to be, but it did get masses of passers by so it may have been the premium busker pitch.

There was a whole range of music around as many musicians just turned up and found a spot to start playing, plus there were two designated performance areas. One was a stage area where bands seemed to get about a 30 minute playing slot next to plenty of food sellers and a few tables and chairs around under shade, the second was a square of empty ground in the centre of the market where performers of all types tried their luck There were musicians, mime artists and a slightly strange bunch of orange clad Buddhist guys chanting hari krishna and clanging tiny symbols. A few of them looked as if they knew what they were doing but there were 4 guys at the rear who could well have just tagged on or been scooped up from the pub, as they were out of step, looked very uncomfortable and a bit overwhelmed and seemed to have trouble with the simple two line chant. Maybe they were just new.

After doing a full circuit and avoiding buying any more clothes, I had a delicious chicken satay followed by a fresh fruit ice block of mango,strawberry and honey, then went to find the cheapest massage tent. I use the term tent lightly as the sides were made up of lightweight sarongs pegged to the top of the stall that flapped in the breeze and were thin enough to give really good silhouette views of customers laying naked on the bench, but if the massage was good enough you wouldn’t notice the peeping toms in your blissed-out state. I had a lovely hour long oil massage by a tiny lady who had surprisingly strong hands and managed to tackle my knotted shoulders and neck as I relaxed, letting the sounds and good smells of the market roll over me. There was a guy playing great mellow didgeridoo close by and I was very chilled when I left.

As there was not a cloud in the sky and it was warm I decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. Mistake. Big mistake. As soon as I sat down I realised that the thick gloopy massage oil I was covered in was a sand magnet and I looked like an extra from the Mummy’s sand warriors in no time at all. It would not brush off and it hurt when I tried to rub the gritty sand off my skin. No problem, I went down to the sea to wash it off then returned to sunbathing on the beach. I had managed to wash off all the sand but the oil stayed glistening all over my body which was now wet as well as sticky. As BP in the Gulf of Mexico are all too aware, if you mix oil and sand and water you get a huge mess, so within a few minutes I was covered in another thick layer of sand that this time set like concrete as it dried in the sun. I could have rendered a house with it. After 30 minutes of baking in my sand-oven I gave up and walked home, looking as if I had been pebble-dashed and leaving a trail of lumpy sand balls in my wake. The only thing that would shift it was 15 minutes of hot water and repeated lathering using over half a tube of shower gel. Lesson learned.

I had more luck over the next two days and managed to get some truly excellent beach time. I set myself up on the angled side of one of the sand dunes that fringe the beach and sculpted a great sand-chair in the shape of an elongated “S” on its side, forming a raised pillow under my head, a smooth curved arc behind my back, a huge hole for my bottom then a wide ledge under my thighs that supported all of my weight and took the pressure off my back. The final stage was a smooth curved support under my legs ending in another small ledge for my feet. Perfect. Next to the sand-chair I made a wide flat ramp that was ideal for face-down sun worship, pitched at the perfect ray-gathering angle. It was all very comfortable. I took my dry sack that protected all my stuff from blowing sand and also had great insulating qualities, managing to keep my drinking water frozen all day - I always freeze a couple of small bottles of water if I have access to an ice box which provides icy cold drinks. I had stopped at the bakery on the way and picked up a raspberry and coconut muffin, which made a perfect breakfast.
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My neighbour a little further along the dune was an eccentric guy who had built a great adobe style pad from banked sand walls that he threw new damp sand on occasionally to stop the wind eroding his home, all topped with shade awnings made from shirts strung taut on string. He lived here during the day. He had all manner of weird and wonderful friends visit him and it was very entertaining. He was no bother, was very polite and stopped to pass the time of day with me each time he passed. He liked to walk backwards when he went down to the sea to swim (and probably to pee) which was a little unusual, but why not ? He also managed to scare away some particularly annoying Irish girls who were not content with over 4 miles of wide empty beach to choose from and who came and parked themselves 5 feet away from me on MY dune. He came out of his sand igloo and started to stretch and grunt, which attracted the girls attention, then when they saw him wave to me and start to walk over shouting about how glorious the day was, they grabbed their towels and moved. Excellent.

On the third beach day the wind was gusting and sand kept blowing over me so I dug a big hole to sit in shaped like a massive hammock. It was hard work digging it all out, but the plan worked and for most of the time I was sheltered apart from having to eat my sandwich with my head completely inside a plastic bag to avoid getting sand crunch. It was another relaxing morning. Sadly the wind got stronger and when it got to mini-blizzard stage and my skin started to be sand-blasted, I moved inland.

I am enjoying being in one place and not travelling for a change so have extended my booking for a few more days in Byron Bay and will find some way of seeing the inland areas.

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Comments

[teal1066]

amazing pictures
byron bayn beach houses is really a beautiful...i really like to visit byron bay..