Coasting along

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Off to the east

I was actually feeling a bit nervous about getting back on the road again after feeling quite settled in Sydney, but I also couldn't wait to get moving again and head up the East Coast. My last weekend in Sydney the sun decided to shine non stop and there seemed to be blossom out everywhere and I started to feel a real affection for the place, but I had the joy of a 14 hour bus journey to look forward to, so packed up my things, leaving a big bag of stuff in Sydney and yet still managing to fill my rucksack so full that I can hardly close it, and set off.

...and relax.

Thanks to the kindly donation of an inflatable pillow from Michelle and some sleeping pills from Natalie I actually didn't have a bad journey and managed to get some sleep in, I arrived at Byron Bay at about 8am in the morning and went straight to the hostel and straight to the pool to lay in the sun and relax. I immediately felt like myself again, it felt good to be out of the city and out of work (sorry to rub it in, I know I only did 6 weeks of it in Sydney but there's so much to see and do out here you can't be stuck in an office!) Got chatting to some folk straight away who had all good things to say about Byron Bay and about the Hostel. I stayed at the Arts Factory which is fantastic, it has a slight hippy feel to it, with a camping area, tee-pee's to sleep in and normal dorm rooms as well. It has a swimming pool, yoga classes, meditation, didgeridoo lessons and a bar attached, basically you don't need to leave the grounds if you don't want to. Its also a really sociable place, when cooking dinner and grabbing a seat everyone is chatty and friendly and my first night I didn't head out into town for drinks, everyone just hung around drinking their cheap wine and beer and chatting. This was also due to the torrential rain and thunder storm, no one wanted to move anywhere and we all just hibernated in the lounge.

I decided to let myself have a pretty lazy time of it for the first few days and lay by the pool, I managed one walk to the beach but it was really windy, sand just got everywhere so I headed back to the safety of the hostel. I did play a game of volleyball and I think I can confidently say I was an integral part in leading my team to lose the whole tournament. I met a guy from New Zealand and an Aussie who had met up with 2 Swiss girls and we headed out dancing for the night and the following night we joined what seemed to be the entire population of Byron Bay at the Beach hotel (previously owned by the Australian icon Mick Dundee don't you know) and went to see the band 'Fat Freddy's Drop' playing. They're from New Zealand and are a sort of funk reggae band and the whole side wall of the bar was opened up so we could just dance outside under the stars all night long, there was such a good atmosphere and the band just seemed to keep playing and playing for hours.

Thunder bolt and lightning.......

The next day Ryan (the guy from New Zealand) picked up his van and a few of us had a little day trip to Nimbin, a small town about 2 hours away that is famous for its hippies and there were some pretty strange characters there. We didn't get there until late afternoon by which time the guy in the coffee shop had lost all ability to use the coffee machine or indeed pour milk, he gave up in the end and had to wait for his assistant to do it. It was getting dark by the time we set off and a little way down the road we started to see flashes of lightning across the sky, they grew more and more frequent and seemed to light up the whole sky all around us, then the forks of lightning and the cracking thunder started and the rain began to pelt down. We all started to feel a little nervous as we were travelling along unlit country roads in the middle of pretty much no where in a beaten up old van. We stopped to try and take some pictures and a massive crack of lightning forked down in what must have been the next field so we quickly got back in and tried to get back to the hostel as fast as we could, which wasn't very fast due to bad viserbility and the windy roads. We took a wrong turn at one point but finaly managed to make it back all in one piece. It was an absolutley amazing display, none of us had ever seen anything like it before, we were travelling right in the middle of the whole storm, it seemed to follow us the whole way back, definitley a car journey I'll never forget.

on top of the world

I managed to drag myself away from the pool on the Friday and headed to the beach with some lads fom the hostel, after watching them play football for a while the guilt go too much for me and I headed off for the walk up to the Byron Bay Lighthouse to try and involve some sort of exercise into my week. It's only about an hour walk but in the heat you really feel it but its worth every second, the views of the coast line were just beautiful and once you reach the lighthouse you can then walk down to the most easterly part of the Australian mainland and look out across the ocean. I've never been anywhere where you can see such an expanse of water and you can truly get the feel of the curve of the world. I kept my eye out for whales and dolphins as they'd been spied only days before, but I just missed the whale season and was out of luck, they've all headed up north now. I sat up there watching as the sun started to go down and finaly had to drag myself away in order to get back before the roads got tooo dark, otherwise I could have just sat there for days and days I think.

catching up with Koalas

With only 4 weeks to do the East Coast I should have really only stayed for a couple of nights in Byron, but I loved it so much and a lot of people say its one of the best places on the coast so I happily stayed for 5 nights instead, then I headed up to Brisbane on the bus with Carsten (a German guy from the hostel) which was thankfully only about 4 or 5 hours away. We pulled into Brisbane and hopped off the bus and said goodbyes as I was off to be picked up by Sam, an old work mate from a few years ago who had been living and working in London for a couple of years. He very kindly picked me up from the bus and put me up in his house for the night as well, we went out for dinner and just generally caught up on old work gossip, although he seemed to know more than me about most of it! I only had the one night in Brisbane as I wasn't too bothered about spending much time in another city again so Sam took me out on the Sunday to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary down the road from his house. I was stupidly excited about this as they have many Koalas (as the title suggests...) and you can hold them as well. They also have kangaroos roaming around a big field that you can hand feed and wombats, cuckaburas, wallabee's, a tasmanian devil that didn't move an inch the whole time we were there, snakes and various other creatures, they even had sheep dog trials as well. It was a great place, with lots of injured animals being looked after really well and I got to cuddle my Koala without it weeing on me which was a bonus.

luxurious living

In the evening I got on yet another bus and headed up to Nanbour, a small town not far away and was picked up by someone else who I hadn't seen for a long time. Our family friends Brooke and Lori have a house out in tiny Mapleton just up the road from Nanbour, they were away in Sydney but their daughter Christie and her boyfriend Brendan live there too so I went to stay for a couple of night. Christie worked out that we haven't seen each other since we were about 13 which is incredibly worrying as I thought it was only about 10 years ago... I arrived to a plateful of gorgeous food courtesy of Brendan, who used to be a chef, and tasty wine and lots of catch up chat. The house was gorgeous as well and I had the luxury of a huge double bed and my own bathroom which was bliss! They both had work the next day and I just lazed around on the deck of their beautiful house looking out over the countryside with Houston the dog and yet again marvelled at how lucky I was to be here having these experiences and meeting all these people. We had another night in and perhaps started a little early on the wine when Brendan got back from teaching, dinner got forgotten about until quite a lot later and we lay out on the deck watching the stars chatting and drinking and then Brendan got out the guitar accompanied by some singing (or rather shouting) by me and Christie until the early hours. By this point it had already been decided that no one was going to work the next day and we would head to Noosa, my next destination, to watch the famous Melbourne cup. No one works in the afternoon anyway as everyone heads off to the pub to watch the race so I didn't feel too bad about helping convince them to stay off work........ With groggy heads we headed out up the coast, stopped off to see yet more beautiful beaches and went to watch the cup. It's a huge thing here, everyone is out in the pubs dressed up as if they're going to Ascot, there was a fashion show happening in one part of the pub as well. None of us won anything unfortunatley so we headed on up to Noosa for a walk on the beach and managed a few beers whilst watching all the bars filling up and spilling out during the day. They had to get back to the house so I checked in to my hostel, it was so good to see Christie again and I can't get over how generous everyone is being when you just land on their doorstep with nothing but a scruffy rucksack and a bad haircut...

animal acrobatics

I spent a couple of days in Noosa, doing yet more relaxing by the pool and a bit of dancing in the evenings, its not a very busy place and the bar is fairly chilled out at the hostel and there's not much else around in the evenings. Noosa is definitley a more upmarket area and the hostels are set back from the main area where there are lovely little boutiques and nice restauraunts and swanky bars, none of which I could afford to go near of course, but it was a nice place to wander around. I decided to skip the lazing by the pool for the day as I was only there for 2 nights and instead went for a long walk in Noosa National Park along the coast line. It's a well populated Koala area as well, you just need to look out for the small group of tourists craning their necks up to the tree tops and you've found one. I saw two, one was quite hidden and just chomping away on his leaves but the second one was looking down at us and almost seemed to be posing for photographs, it then made a daring leap to another tree for our amusement - he crawled slowly along this tiny branch that was bending more and more and getting thinner and thinner and just when it seemed he'd fall he managed to grab another branch and slumped down on it. The most activity I've seen any of the Koalas do. It was great to have a chance to see them out in the wild, all these animals barely seem real as they are just such typical symbols of Australia and so foreign to Britain, its weird to finally be seeing them all.

moving on

The second night I met these English guys at the hostel bar who were out visiting their friends who now live out here, we went back to their house and I had an impromtu diving lesson with all the breathing gear and everything in their simming pool. I was really nervous about going under the water, but it was just a little pool and I found the breathing much easier than when I'd first snorkelled and was really pleased to have the chance to try going back under the water for the first time since christmas, although the red wine we'd been consuming all night may have assisted with my confidence......It was just great to swim around and look up at the night sky through the water even though it was in a small, shallow swimming pool, every step of this trip has given me back my confidence with travelling and water and life in general. Next stop up the coast is Hervey Bay for a trip over to Fraser Island and then up to the Whitsundays, there's a few other places I want to try and see as well along the way but I'm not sure I'll have time, the trip is just flying by and the weeks are over before they feel like they've begun, so I'm just making the most of it whilst I can.

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Photos

watching a bit of football on the beach
..and why not..??!!

Me and Friend
the funny look on my face is due to trying to ignore the claws digging into my skin...