Day 47 Coffs Harbour - Nimbin - Suffolk Park
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2007
1
40
70
Trip End
Mar 27, 2008
Byron Bay,
Australia
Monday, January 14, 2008
We said our goodbyes to Jess and Luke, it's so sad saying goodbye when you know that most likely we will never meet again but there's always e-mail and we have promised we will keep in touch (when I get back to the UK). It takes so long typing all this up that I have got seriously behind with my personal e-mails and haven't had time to check them for ages.
It was raining when we set off, we have had a lot of rain since we have been in Australia. They are having some freak weather here and a usually dry and hot time of the year has been very wet causing flooding and damage. Some parts have been flooded so severely that it has been declared a national disaster. We managed to find the Pacific Highway without getting lost this time and Nimbin was very well signposted from Lismore. When we came off the highway and headed inland, the countryside was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of England, it is very green. This has really surprised Dean and I as we have driven up the coast. We both expected Australia to be very dry and dusty but it isn't, it is very green with forests and hundreds of rivers and creeks (small river/stream). We got to Nimbin in about three hours and as we drove into the village (which basically appears to consist of just one street) we saw signs saying that the village of Nimbin is a no-alcohol zone. WHAT! There is no way we are staying here.! However, just a little bit further up the street, we spotted a bottle shop and small pub. Phew.
We parked the car and went to have a look around the "village". The street is not very big and there are no hippies here, they are zombie's. It is totally freaky. With the exception of the bus loads of tourists obviously on a day trip, everyone seems to be really scruffily dressed with long, scruffy , unbrushed hair, weird scruffy clothes and in the case of the men - long scruffy hair and beards like ZZ Top. This place has a really odd feeling to it, I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad feeling, I can't put my finger on it but Dean felt it too. We just felt so out of place and uncomfortable there.
Out of curiosity, we went into the Hemp Embassy which is where the HEMP (Help End Marijuana Prohibition) Party bases itself. The shop contains every imaginable pot-related paraphernalia and attatched to the shop is the HEMP bar where everyone was smoking herbs and most of them looked like they had been at it all day. The staff here were so stoned, they didn't really talk, just nodded and grunted. We chatted for a few minutes to some other tourists, a lot are here on day trips. Byron Bay is a one and a half hour drive away from here and there are two buses a day to here. The bus is called the Grasshopper. (yes, really).
We had expected to meet some pot-smoking hippie's here and I don't have a problem with people that choose to smoke pot. I generally find in my own experience that these type of people are much better behaved than drunks. We had met a lot of hippie's in Thailand and had a great time with some of them. But here, some of these people have obviously taken pot smoking to the extreme. They were utterly zombie-fied. I have never seen anything like it in all my life. There was a guy in the hemp bar that was so stoned you couldn't even see his eyes, they were rolled back in his head and all you could see were the whites of his eyes. I work in a hospital and sometimes we a have patient's that are drug addicts but I have never, ever seen anybody EVER looking as bad as that. I couldn't believe he was standing up, it totally freaked me out to look at him. It was actually quite frightening.
Apparantly the mission of this town is to eventually get cannabis legalised and they have been trying to achieve this for years. Every year, in the first weekend in May, Nimbin hosts it's annual Mardi Grass Cannabis Law Reform Rally. Personally, I think if you come here and see the zombie's, it is the perfect advertisement for keeping cannabis strictly ILlegal. Forget the duck-billed platypi, there is no way we are staying here - it's just too weird. Who knows what kind of freaks we would have to share the hostel with. We got back in the car and headed back the way we had come.
We managed to find the Pacific High way again and headed towards Byron Bay, a place we have been told by numerous tourists is beautiful and a must-see. It was getting late now and apparantly Byron is packed at this time of year so we are going to try and find accommodation in Lennox Head which is a 15 minute drive from Byron. We got there about 4ish, Dean has done a lot of driving today and is a bit fed up now. Lennox Head is pretty small and we trawled around all the hostels and motels looking for a bed for the night and there were none. This is the first time this has ever happened to us but at least we have the car. So we got back in the car and headed a bit closer to Byron. Off the coast road, we saw a sign for a motel with a vacancy in a little place called Suffolk Park. It was slightly more that we would have liked to pay but it was late and we were both tired, a bit fed up and needing of a shower. The room was gorgeous with a kettle, TV and toaster and the bed was amazingly comfortable. We had a little patio at the back where we could sit outside.
It is a lovely little place here, there is a petrol station, bakery, bottle shop (that's what they call an off license, supermarkets are not allowed to sell alcohol), spar and around five different restaurants. The motel has a lovely little pool and a gas barbeque. We have brought a couple of pork chops and some corn on the cob for our tea and we were looking forward to barbequeing them later. We went down to have a look at the beach which is beautiful and again, absolutely huge. It went on for miles. It is a shame it was still a bit rainy, it has been raining on and off all day and the clouds are low and heavy. I was glad that we ended up here and got to see it because we would never have bothered otherwise, and we have found some beach lilo's in the Spar. We went back to our room to get our stuff togerthere for the barbeque, it is a big gas one which is thankfully undercover as it is really raining hard now. Dean tried and tried to light it but then on further inspection, discovered that the gas bottle was empty. He sent me off to the office to ask for the spare bottle. She informed me there was no spare, it is on order and she is very sorry. When I got back to Dean he had a go at me for not complaining, hard. He said "What if there had been a team of us and we had spent a fortune on meat?" He does have a point but I've never been one for kicking up a fuss even if I am in the right; I always end up being the one apologising even when I should be complaining! I know I need to learn to be more assertive.
To be continued.... Getting kicked out again
