All Part of the Fun

It was time to properly start our Aussie tour up the East Coast!
We boarded the Greyhound Bus at 7pm eager to reach our first destination, a place called Byron Bay. For some reason Scott and I weren’t placed together (allocated seating) so we didn’t have the movies we had downloaded the night before to keep us company through the 13hour drive… We got quite lucky though as Scott was seated with a guy who liked a good chat and happened to be staying at the same hostel as us, and I was sat on my own for the first leg of the journey so plenty of room to spread out and attempt at catching some much needed Zz’s. Saying that, the second half of the journey I spent next to quite a large fellow, who liked to smoke a cigar at every stop, lovely. All part of the fun!

We arrived in Byron at around 8:40am tired but excited to see what the area offered us. Unfortunately first impressions weren’t fantastic as grey clouds had gathered and a drizzle filled the air. Check-in at our hostel wasn’t until 2pm so we dropped off our bags, met up with some of Scott’s mates  who were also visiting and explored the surfing town.  It’s times like this I wished I had some spare cash to use as there are so many little boutique-like shops full of some pretty nice clothes. Most of it is beach / summer wear as you’d expect from the area, non-of-which I would be able to crack out once we were back in England, but it didn’t stop us wanting to have a little spending spree nonetheless. All part of the fun.
Scott and I also had a look at the beach and even in the bad weather it was really pretty. A lighthouse stood proud on the cliffs to the left and the bay followed in a large horse-shoe shape.

That night we went for a meal / few drinks at Cheeky Monkeys as Scott and I had some free meal tokens. When we got there we had the choice of 3 things, and when they came to us we thought they were taking the piss. They arrived with two tiny bowls [think of the Japanese bowls used to wash your fingers before a meal] filled with basically just a spoonful of rice / spaghetti. Beer was cheap though and there was a really fun atmosphere (it was Coyote Ugly night, so dancing on tables was essential). All part of the fun.

Today we went on a day trip to Nimbin, which is about 40 minutes away from the bay. The weather hadn’t got any better, still warm but constantly pelting heavy rain. The bus came to collect us, driven by an Aussie who made it clear he was ‘down with the kids’ who had a box of ice ready to be filled with beer and road tunes blasting out of speakers all around (when a bunch of drunken 18-15 year olds ask the driver to turn his music down… you know it’s bad)! Oh, and the bus had more holes than a Swiss cheese, I think we would have been dryer sitting on an open-top school bus. All part of the fun!

Nimbin is like a little town you’d expect to find down a street in Amsterdam or the Caribbean, where the law turns a blind eye and everyone is care-free. There is this house someone has converted to a museum of all things weird and subject to propaganda. The whole place is really like an acid trip made of paper mache, but it was a good laugh to look around.

After a BBQ we made our way back carefully through roads that had quickly become rivers (we didn’t get swept away which was good) and spent the rest of the evening chatting to our new roommates [8 to a room here].

All part of the fun!