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Published: April 19th 2007
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G’Day…Hows it goin’?
...The most asked question in Australia! Especially Byron Bay! Byron was about 3hours north of Coffs Harbour and another stop up the East coast for us. However it wasn’t quite as we expected. First of all this was our first time camping and trying out our new tent…which is not very big but is perfect for carrying around and does the 2 of us fine.
We met back up with our friend Nick who we met in Sydney and we decided to stay at the famous Arts Factory Lodge which is an amazing place and we hadn’t seen anything like it before!.. its about 10mins walk out of town has the Budda Bar and “Lounge Cinema” (complete with cow print cushions and seats you literally lye down on) in fact on our last night we went to see one of the late night films which start at 11pm The Departed…which was class and was so excited we didn’t even fall asleep!
The Arts Factory is built right in the middle of the bush around a lake with dorms in double decker buses and tepees! There are even jungle huts on the lake sort of
like permanent tents. But we were in the camping bit. The kitchen and toilets left a lot to be desired and were complete with 2 resident pythons (4ft and 6ft), possums, wild turkeys that ran around your tents on the mornings, frogs in the kitchen, huntsman spiders (giant) in the seating area, millions of mosquitos and far too many screaming birds at the crack of dawn! Honestly how many times I just wanted to kill the loudest crow in the world who sat above our tent every morning!!! Needless to say we didn’t always sleep well especially with no pillows!
The small town of Byron is totally full of hippies who all seemed to be staying at the Arts Factory!! I’ve never seen so many tie dyed T-Shirts or Dreadlocks in my life! Plus all of the alternative medicines and therapies on offer in the strange little shops. The beach was absolutely lush though…we spent most of our days there chucking ourselves into the waves and sunning ourselves in the beautiful sunshine. There was a more welcome wildlife experience when we first went into the sea…as we were swimming we looked out and about 10 metres away from us
was a dolphin jumping out the water!! It was amazing…plus we were glad the fin didn’t belong to a shark!
We also met up with The girls from Sydney, they were staying in a hostel across town but we spent days on the beach together and had a class night chilling next to the beach drinking Goon (very cheap boxes of wine) and swapping stories and looking forward to doing the Fraser Island trip altogether on the 29th April.
There were amazing Kebab shops in Byron and also the best bakery in the world called “The 23 Hour Bakery” we couldn’t work out which hour it was closed but everytime we walked past it was open and sold amazing beef, cheese and bacon pies or chicken, cheese, bacon and egg… or the nicest apple crumble ever (all sooooo cheap) it was amazing! Apart from that we pretty much lived on 2 minute noodles for a week…yum yum and had a nice meal out for our 2 Year Anniversary! (even though it re-appeared later that night when I was ill in out tent…yuk! Bless Ant he must really love me…he gave me his clean sleeping bag and slept outside
on the hostel’s veranda with the resident cat to keep him company!)
There were some good stuff on at The Budda Bar during the week…we went to the quiz twice (but never won) even though Ant was ecstatic when he was the only person who knew what Harry Potter’s owl was called!! Saddo. There was also a man who lived at the hostel called Cockatoo Paul (the one man band who wears cockatoo feathers in his hair) who had recently won the best Busker in Byron award. He plays a 7 piece drum kit with his feet, has maracas, loads of didgeridoos, a guitar AND sings! He was really good.
The only thing I wish we had done in Byron was go to the famous lighthouse. It sits on the most easterly point of Australia, and is the lightest beam in the southern hemisphere reaching for 40km!! but it was amazing to watch at night anyway. And we did sign up for a sunrise tour to go up there at 5am and watch the sunrise….however when you put Anthony in charge of the phone alarm it doesn’t go off! So unfortunately we missed it…that’s the last time Ant
is in charge of alarms! We were also going to walk up ourselves on our last day but I was still as sick as a dog so spent most of the day in bed trying to sleep it off…then I was ok.
Byron Bay is a very amazing place, we sometimes felt like we didn’t fit in and should wear some scruffier clothes. It was a bit too laid back…and “chill out man” for our liking and we were happy to leave yesterday to come to Brisbane. However what we did like about it was there was no fast food chain invasion…not a MacDonald’s or Burger King in sight and not Americanised at all like Sydney/Bondi was.
So we are at Peter and Louise’s lush big house just outside of Brisbane…and are more than happy to have a clean bathroom and a BED!!! Such a far cry from camping...we don’t want to leave!lol
Hope everyone’s doing alright and hope the weather has improved at home.
Chow for now xxxx
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John and Steph
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Ongoing Experience
Hi Guys, glad to see you at least enjoyed the experience at Byron even though you say it was a bit too laid back for you. We really enjoyed our stays there, but I suppose we are a couple of old hippies at heart. I am more than sure you will be very comfortable at Peter and Louises, they are very good hosts. Next stop Rainbow beach? PS. Has Ant's diving qualification arrived yet? I sent it a few days ago. Cheers John and Steph