Byron Bay

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G'Day everybody, For the past 3 months I've been living and working in Byron Bay. The hippie capital of east coast Australia, along with my best buddy fron Uni, Andrea. It's been a pretty eventful time with lots of ups (piss ups) and downs (working). We learnt the hard way that these two don't necessarily go hand in hand..... like the fateful Saturday night we decided not to call the restaurant to see if they needed us to work, deciding instead to get hammered and go out. Two hours in, and both completly drunk we recieved a phone call from our boss. Giggling like scool girls we asked our flatmate to answer and say we weren't in.
Half an hour later our later our boss phoned back and screamed blue murder at our flat mate, saying that if we didn’t go into work that night we’d be sacked - OOPPPS! Ten minutes later we called back with a completely fabricated story about the car breaking down on the way back from Pizza Land (not that we have a car!) Luckily she bought it and all was well apart from bouncing off the walls at work that night!

Speaking of flatmates we have been living with a psycho-maniac for the past 3 months. Two Irish chefs (bonus) moved in with us and nearly tipped him over the edge with their drunken antics and sarcasm. One night he threatened to kill them with a frying pan and worse still, bury our Tracey Chapman CD at the bottom of the garden if we played it once more- charming. We have now moved house and live with 7 other travellers. It’s not the Ritz but there’s never a dull moment.

Here are some of the highlights of the last few months

**Andrea’s 25th (eek) Birthday Do

A big weekend was planned to commiserate Andrea turning 25. We hired a car with our flat mates and spent the weekend at Surfers Paradise. The whole point of going to Surfer’s was to find a cool Irish pub in which to spend St Patrick’s day. (Andrea’s Birthday). Unfortunately this didn’t quite go according to plan ….

We arrived in high spirits on Saturday evening and immediately signed up for a club crawl with our youth hostel. In preparation we guzzled 4.4 litres of cheap Stanley wine (between the two of us of course!) and could hardly walk by the time we started the ‘crawl’. It was a fantastic night, but we suffered the consequences the next day After a very late night (we got to bed at 7am) we were woken up by the blazing sun and so had to drag ourselves out of our pit and into the pool, where we spent the rest of the day feeling very sorry for ourselves possibly one of the worst hangovers ever! Not even a Dominoes pizza could cure it. That night another good time was planned for Andrea’s Birthday in a groovy Irish bar we’d spotted on our early morning visit to MacDonald’s. Unfortunately our evil hangovers prevented us from drinking more than a ‘schooner’ ( approx a pint each!) however, we all agreed Saturday night was worth the pain.

** Mount Warning Trek**

After months of lazing around on the beach, admiring the view of Mount Warning we finally decided to climb it. We had planned to set off at 2am in order to reach the summit for sunrise. However, when our alarm went off at one the idea instantly lost all appeal. Instead we hit the road at 8am, which is early enough for me and reached the National Park one and a half hours later after a few detours. It took a hot and humid 2 hours and a 200 metres vertical scramble to reach the summit but the views were well worth it. ( As was the gorgeous white Kit Kat taken along as an incentive for the climb.) On the drive back we stopped at a town with the coolest name in the world, Moo Ball. As you would expect, everything, including the lampposts were painted in cow print.

** Nim Bin Mardi Gras**

Each year the cannabis focused town of Nim Bin holds a weed festival called the Mardi Gras. We spent the last day of the festival there as we offered to pick up our flat’s mate car- he was so out of it the night before that he lost his car keys and had to hitch a ride home. A number of weed related events were held including a speed joint rolling contest and a bong throwing contest. In true festival style mother nature decided that rain would add an interesting dimension to the celebrations, turning the main field into a mud bath. By the end of the day we were covered from head to toe in mud- not quite what you’d expect of a festival in Australia.

On Thursday I am leaving Byron (boo hoo) and going up to Brisbane for a few days before flying out to Bangkok on Monday to meet Scott and start the next part of the adventure- Thailand, India and Nepal!

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