Hey, hey, we're in Byron Bay!

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We rode out of Sydney on the overnight Greyhound bus, arriving in Byron Bay all bleary-eyed the next morning. It's a pretty cool seaside town, but 95%!o(MISSING)f the population are backpackers, and the majority of those are from England! The beaches are beautiful, covered in smooth white sands, and were even better than Fiji!

We'd chosen our hostel because they offered a free introduction to Scuba-diving in a swimming pool to get used to the equipment, but when we asked about it they just pointed us to the local dive centre where it was free for everybody! Cheeky blighters.

Scuba-diving is harder than I thought, and there's lots of things you have to think about while you're descending or climbing in the water, so even though - and I'll be honest here - the view in the pool wasn't quite as good as I think it will be at the Great Barrier Reef, it was definitely a good, free, introduction.

The next day we had our first surfing lesson, full-sized boards and everything! We were taken to a small inlet where the waves weren't too big but lasted aaages and were perfect to try our balancing skills, as we often surfed for more 50 metres! Eleni and I are entering the World Championships next week.

Then in the afternoon we made use of the hostel's free bikes to ride up to the lighthouse, mainland Australia's most easterly point. On the way, I had a small accident.

We were riding on the cycle path, when I looked round to see where Eleni was. Don't get me wrong, I'm a pro bike-rider. But I momentarily lost control and headed towards the grass verge. Unfortunately, the overgrown reeds and bushes served as a trapdoor-like false bottom, as they hid the enormous ditch that I fell into headfirst!

I was wearing my helmet, but I felt like my head had just been slammed in a fridge door, and had a bit of a headache for the rest of the day, and struggled to concentrate on what people were saying. Don't think I'll ever ride a bike bare-headed again!

Next stop was Brisbane, we were told there's not much to do there so we only planned to stay 24 hours. We booked a cheap dorm, and when we got there we saw why. We knew it was 32 bed dorm, but there's nice 32-bed dorms, and dark (at midday!), dingy, very smelly 32 bed dorms- resembling a run-down hospital. We tried to upgrade but only the most expensive were left so we made sure we spent as little time as possible in there.

We headed to the South bank, which is a renovated area just south of the river with a man-made lagoon and beach - it was gorgeous, doesn't look like the city centre is just across the river. There wasn't much else to do except see the shops, so we carried on heading north to Noosa.

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Photos

Sad, isn't it?
Even in a developed country like Australia, trees can often still be found in cages like this. Makes you think...

The Big Prawn
As promised!