Day 82 - Brisbane to Byron Bay

  Byron Bay, Australia
Friday, November 23, 2007

After another heavy night of drinking I was gutted to be wide awake before 8am, but to be fair it probably wasn't helped by Katie calling around hostels in Byron Bay with the phone right next to my head. Some might even suggest this was done intentionally...

I took the hint and got up, to find out that H had woken up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep either.

Simone knocked us up a really good brekkie, and again we really enjoyed having such warm and fun people to chat to, you can't beat catching up with old friends.

Eventually H set off for work, and the 3 of us followed shortly afterwards.

As we got to the office, Katie cunningly disappeared to buy some flowers for the guys to say thank you, while I caught up on email.

Simone then kindly lent me her PC so that I could spend some time burning my photos onto CDs, and it took bloody ages to get them done. Thankfully Simone & H had popped out, so I wasn't creating too much havoc in their office!

We said our fond farewells when they returned, we were sad to leave them so quickly but we had to push on down the coast to Byron Bay.

After Noosa, the coastal highway changes from single carriageway to dual carriageway, and after Brisbane it gets even wider, so we made good progress as we left the 'Sunshine Coast' and headed down to the 'Gold Coast'.

The most famous town on the Gold Coast is Surfers Paradise, a small town that became popular with surfers (get away!) in the 50s.

Apparently at that time the town had a very dull name, and one of the cafes in the town was called "Surfer's Paradise". Some bright spark suggested renaming the town to follow the shop, and it has never looked back.

Surfers certainly isn't the prettiest town in Australia, it's probably the closest they come to having a Costa Del Sol, or a Bennidorm, i.e. a beach resort with towers of accommodation and crawling with people, usually young and drunk!

 

To make it even worse, this week is "Schoolies" week in Oz, when the 17 yr olds celebrate finishing high school by having a monumental piss-up on the beach.

The adventures of Schoolies have been all over the news since we arrived in Queensland, they're absolutely notorious over here. Either that or the press just enjoy whipping it up into a frenzy!

Add to the equation "toolies" - older kids that come to crash the party - and "mulies" - drug dealers - (no I'm not making this up!) and you have pretty much a week of total carnage playing out over the local news. 

As you can imagine, we were DELIGHTED that our time on the Gold Coast coincided almost perfectly with this period, so we agreed to drive through Surfers without staying there.

The weather today was warm but cloudy, so we drove up the beach front, had a quick walk down the beach, made some sandwiches for lunch and headed south again...



About an hour later we arrived in Byron Bay, another famous beach town, but for very different reasons to Surfers.

Byron is renowned for being a bit more 'bohemian', and became more popular with hippies rather than with surfers.

We had the usual accomodation dramas when we arrived, finding only one place with a double room in the whole town, and that was 5 mins drive out of the centre.

This wasn't ideal so we had a quick look in the centre to see if we could find somewhere not in the guidebooks.

Unfortunately that proved utterly fruitless, so we checked into our very over-priced A$80 double room (which stinks and is uber-basic with shared bathroom, kitchen etc), and walked down to the beach.

The beach itself at Byron is lovely, but again it was all a bit dull today, due to all the rain clouds hovering overhead. The rain wasn't the only thing hovering overhead...



We walked all the way down to the best beaches in the centre of town, which was a fair old trek.



Once in town we bought some grub for dinner, bemoaned the lack of bohemian shops/cafes, and then walked back up the beach again.

 

I'm sure this place looks much better with the sun shining (like most places), and we definitely prefer it to Surfers, but we really don't think it's even slightly bohemian.

Maybe it used to be years ago, but now it has all the usual brands of chain pubs, restaurants & shops, so it's like a mini Noosa. It's also very expensive, so all in all rather underwhelming.

We're going to cook some pasta in the kitchen tonight, and we'll see what the weather's like tomorrow, fingers crossed.

If it's good we'll chill out by the beach and catch some sun, if it's crap then we'll drive down towards Sydney, and stay with one of my best friends from school, Rob "Smithers" Smith, school striker extraordinaire. Or should that be ordinaire... ;)
 
Unfortunately Rob & his wife Helen couldn't make our wedding where he would have been one of my ushers, so I've only seen once since he emigrated to Australia 4 years ago or so.

We're really looking forward to seeing Rob & Helen and to meet their son Joshua for the first time.


lots of love,


Al & Katie xx