Byron Bay
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
50
72
Trip End
Ongoing
Byron Bay,
New South Wales,
Australia
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Byron Bay is a very, very popular stop off on the east coast roadtrip route. We arrived to find it packed full of backpackers, hippies, campervans and surfers. I hold my hand up and admit I didn't think I'd like the place. It's like a giant version of Camden Market - all alternative therapies; crappy clothes made from vegetables; backpacker travel services and overpriced surf shops.
Weirdly, I loved it.
Byron Bay itself didn't hold to much appeal for us - it is very nice to stroll around the stores, have a few beers in the Great Northern Hotel (some large bands play there too) and just amble around slowly, being hippy-ish - tuning in and dropping out - or something like that. But the surrounding nature reserves, beaches and general setting was sublime, that we couldn't help but stay a few days.
Cape Bryon, around which Byron Bay town lays, is the most eastern point of the Australian mainland, so to add to our collection of most westernly and southerly, we promptedly walked to the top of cape, and watched the numerous hangliders riding the currents just above the castle like lighthouse
Cape Byron
. Just off shore, there was a large pod of Dolphins feeding, and further out, Humpack Wales. Awesome stuff.We stayed just out of town at Broken Head, which is a large nature reserve, on a very long surf beach that stretched all the way to Cape Byron. Most other campers were surfers, and it's a lifestyle that I could have become accustomed to very quickly indeed - a ten second walk to the beach; surf for a while; have a kip; eat and then repeat. Awesome. We took a few walks up and around the headland, watching the Surfers and just listening to the bird calls. It was simply sublime.
We also noticed the amount of posseurs on the beach, the types who have all the gear, but do nothing except walk around with their boards. They never even enter the water, let alone surf. I'm a huge snowboarder, and you get plenty of them types in that sport, so do sympathise with the sufers. Thing is, anyone who is of any interest is too busy having fun in the surf/snow to notice what you're wearing or the equipment you have...
Back in the campsite, a lot of stressed bird calls alerted us to the very large Monitor Lizard crawling a few metres from our Van. Taking photos of it, it actually went for me, and my subsquent leap for my life made the large group of campers observing laugh for a long time. I'm glad I could entertain.
After making some negative remarks about some very slow hippies, and then some very loud and boastful backpackers, Helen made a fairly decent point: "Darren", she says, "You are unemployed
Cape Byron from Broken Head - moody weather
. You have unkempt hair. You live in a Campervan. You strut around half the day in board shorts and very little else. You have bits of metal through your skin, and ink all over your skin. You are a Hippie!". She had a point. I'm just a really boring one. I'm also a backpacker - our time with the Van is almost at an end - just an unsocial, timid one, who doesn't want to go on a pub crawl and instead ends up in his dorm room. Alone.So to cheer myself up, I had an Ice Cream and then got more Ink in my skin. Sorry Mum. We had planned to stop by Byron Bay as I had learned of a certain Tattoo Parlour and the guy who ran it, but like most locals, a morning trip to Bryon Bay turned into a few days stay, such is the appeal.
Mum, you can have the last laugh - tattoos on your elbows really hurt. But you will like these tattoos, promise.
