Australia Week 3: Port Macquarie -> Brisbane

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  Brisbane, Australia
Friday, May 19, 2006

So it turns out some of you DO read this after all! I get emails moaning about the length of my entries whenever I post and then when I go quiet for a while I get emails nagging me about taking so long to update! Ahhh I never knew you cared! Anyway I'll try really hard to get up to date again. The thought of you all sitting there in silence twiddling your thumbs is too heartbreaking to bear.

I last left you in Port Macquarie with yet more animal stories - plenty more of them over the coming weeks I'm afraid! Anyway, we left early the next morning and headed up Highway 1 to Coffs Harbour. We'd originally planned on doing a 4 hour walk (seriously!) but it was incredibly hot and we decided it would be too uncomfortable. Any excuse. Instead, I directed Dan off the Pacific Highway and onto Waterfall Way, driving up to a lookout point over Dorrigo National Park. The views were lovely and we sat on a bench enjoying the sunshine and spotting wild kookaburras (Bill Oddie eat your heart out) in the trees. We were joined by a group of pensioners who made a nuisance of themselves and tortured our starving stomachs with their sandwiches

01: View over Dorrigo National Park

. They asked me to take a photo of them as they "like to get pictures of ourselves in picnic situations" (?!) and after 10 minutes of arranging themselves and making people move their cars out of the way, I was finally allowed to take the photo. Obviously it wasn't good enough though as they spent the next hour taking more pictures of themselves holding sandwiches from every angle possible.

Hunger eventually got the better of us so we drove to Dorrigo and had a jacket potato from a health food cafe. It came out with lashings of butter, cheese, chicken and sweet chilli sour cream. I'd like to have seen the unhealthy version! We ate them out on the pavement tables amidst a sudden influx of Hells Angels who appeared out of no where, which is not easy to do in a town where you can see for miles.

We jumped back in the car, which Dan had accidently parked bonnet first toward the pavement. This is actually illegal here so when I say we jumped in, I mean it. We drove off like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde and drove out of town to the Dangar Falls. Took a while to find it but it was worth it once I'd elbowed the old people out of the prime viewing position. It was a really pretty creek cascading into a waterhole that the locals swim in during the summer. Very picturesque and worth the million photographs.

We got to Coffs Harbour just after dark and checked into the Aussitel hostel. We spent some time online and then went into town to do some shopping

02: The river running up to Dangar Falls

. Wasn't a very eventful night as we had a barney and went to sulk in the room. Doesn't work so well when you share a room. Just so you know: when you spend every hour of every day with someone, arguments are going to happen from time to time! Still, we'd patched it up by the morning and headed out to the supermarket to get some picnic supplies. We went to prepare them at the hostel and found a cockroach the size of a small dog in the bedroom. Unfortunately it was only the first of 5 more we had the pleasure of meeting at Aussitel - horrible! It sounds like we're lucky not to have met more along the way though so can't complain too much. I'm not the complaining type anyway though, obviously.

We drove for about half an hour up a hill and through some banana plantations which have suffered pretty badly around here (mainly further up the coast) after the cyclones earlier in the year. It was good to see they were recovering, although quite a few of the farms were up for sale. We stopped at the top of the cliff at Sealy Lookout which gave a lovely view over Coffs Harbour and took our picnic down to the tables in the woods. We moved quickly from the first table after interrupting an ant party and only lasted ten minutes at the second after a spider was found making headway for my flip flops. So we retreated back to the car and ate the picnic in there and found it had a better view anyway. It did get interrupted by a car parking right in front of the lookout point, obscuring everyone's view, where the lady got out with her dog who pooed in the middle of the viewing area and then got back in the car and drove off

03: Dangar Falls and the local swimming pool

. Charming. Oh yeah, then it rained. The perfect picnic.

We left early the next morning after spending the night apologising to the cockroaches for taking up too much room in the bed. We left behind one type of giant creature and quickly swapped it for another, stopping at the petrol station for pictures of the Giant Prawn hanging about next door. Australia seems to have a thing about concrete Big Things and we consider it our duty to get as many cheesy photos of them as possible, including comedy ones involving Shep The Dog. We thought we were fairly unique in our quest to get photos of a random toy in random locations but actually it's more common than you think. Frightening, really. Anyway you used to be able to climb up into the eyes of the Giant Prawn and lookout over Coffs Harbour but it was recently shut. Dan and I left, devastated.

It rained all the way to Ballina, stopping us from doing any of our usual deviations along the way. We stayed in another caravan park (homage to Home And Away) which was about half an hour from Byron Bay. We were graced with three solid days of serious rain which stopped us really going out. We spent most of the time watching daytime TV including the American version of Wife Swap where a religious fanatic swapped her family for a week with one that lives their life by astrology. Really it was quite frightening to watch and the woman went insane, declaring that everyone she met was the Devil. She refused the $40,000 money (the climax of the show is the families receiving this money which is aplit up and allocated by the wife of the other family) until she found out the other woman had designated $20,000 of it for the weight loss surgery she'd wanted

04: How to take your mind off the cockroaches

. Then she decided the woman wasn't the devil after all. Hmm. Good to see she has principles.

Ballina was a pleasant enough town and provided the essentials - food, booze and bad tv - so we were happy. We did spent one afternoon finding some weighing scales to make sure we would fit in the airplane seat on the way home and were happy to see we'd both lost a bit of weight. More luck than judgement to be honest, although we had been eating fairly healthily during the past few weeks. Mind you, I already told you what Australia's version of healthy eating is so we couldn't take anything for granted! Plus, it won't last and we both know it.

Nothing else very exciting happened in Ballina other than us trying to buy a cooling bag with our shopping and the checkout assistant assumed we already owned it and didn't charge us for it. Dan was thrilled at his new found criminal lifestyle despite it only saving us $2.50 and him still making sure I was the one holding it on the way out of the shop in case we were busted. What a gent.

The sun waited until it knew we were leaving before making an appearance. We waved goodbye to Ballina and drove north through Byron Bay. We shot past it to begin with but turned back, meaning we have to drive several times through a stinky area which later turned out to be a chicken slaughterhouse. Nice. We stopped in Byron for a picnic by the beach and it chose that moment to rain again. We ate our lunch in the car overlooking the sea and were surrounded by people doing the same

05: I really shouldn't be so amused by this

. One campercan had a speaker on the roof and was blasting out some tunes, ruining Nature's attempts to spoil our moment.

On the way back out of Byron (and back toward the chickens...) we stopped quickly to use the toilets. This turned out to be a half hour stop due to my fascination with the graffiti which seemed to be a debate by passing (pun intended) travellers over world peace and the evils of power. Only in Byron Bay, hippy capital of the world, could you read this kind of stuff scrawled over toilet walls. Still, the usual level of toilet graffiti was upheld by the exit where a sign stating "More toilets by the pool" was altered to "More toilets by the poo". At least there had been one other person in those loos on my intellectual level. Got to give it to them though - it might have been a crude alteration but it was still accurate. I managed to eventually tear myself away from the artwork after realising that hanging around the toilets with a video camera probably wasn't the best idea.

We left New South Wales behind and welcomed ourselves to Queensland and Surfers Paradise. The only thing I'd known about Surfers Paradise beforehand was its reputation of a few of the residents' and visitors' enjoyment of the herbal lifestyle. I left not knowing much more as I took an almost immediate disliking to the place. The endless high rises, hotels and holiday apartments seemed to me to be the extent of the city. No personality or charm, just casinos, strip joints and fast food joints dotted along the highways

06: Coffs Harbour from Sealy Lookout

. I've since heard it described as the Benidorm of Australia and it sums it up pretty well. The hostel was also horrible and had Dan not stopped me, I'd have done a runner and spent the night in the car.

We'd initially planned on staying in Surfers Paradise for a few days but quickly changed our mind and left the next day. We drove the relatively short distance to Brisbane and thanks to our terrible atlas and slightly better [but road selective and out of date] local map in the Lonely Planet, we got terribly lost and had to go round in circles a few times until we got our bearings. Twenty minutes later we pulled up at the hostel and were relieved to see it looked a million times better than the last one. Frankly, Alcatraz would have been favourable in comparison.

We were there just before lunch and our room wasn't quite ready so we hung around the reception looking at leaflets and giving them our details. Just as we were about to move on, the girl at reception told me I had "absolutely beautiful eyes"! I was really surprised, particularly as I was just thinking how rough I must look with greasy hair (if you think I was hanging around to shower in that last hell-hole, you're mistaken!) and spots on top of spots. To say I was chuffed was an understatement and to Dan's great amusement I turned bright red. Dan compared me to the colour of Ayers Rock and that was enough to entertain him for the rest of the day. I didn't care though as I walked around for the whole day with a smile on my face

07: Shep with the Big Prawn

. A silly little compliment from a stranger may not seem much but it means more than you may think. Next time I think something nice about someone I shall tell them, although perhaps it might be a good idea to choose the right moment. Following them into the toilet, for example, probably wouldn't give the right first impression.

Half an hour later we headed to the room to check it out. Ok, so it was nothing flashy but it had a tv and a fridge and its own en suite so we were pleased. The TV had no remote and the channel buttons had been ripped out (got to love those classy backpackers!) but after a consultation with the experts at reception we devised a way of changing channel using a Blue Peter remote involving a lollipop stick and some cardboard. We ate some leftover food in front of the TV, getting up every half hour to change channels. It was a bit of a pain but I didn't care because, for today, I was the girl with the absolutely beautiful eyes and that's all that mattered.


Will the travellers good mood and opinion of Brisbane continue? Will the lollipop stick hold up and continue to change the channels? Will Dan ever stop laughing at his own jokes? To find out, tune into the next installment of this exciting blog! Once it gets written, anyway.

I'd write next week's now but I'm going to pass in the hope that I may get feeling back into my buttocks by the end of the evening. Hope you enjoyed this week and are busting to email me with all of your latest news. I promise to do next week's and attach photos to them both as soon as I can which should hopefully within the next few days. In the mean time, take care and keep smiling.

x

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08: View of Byron Bay from the lighthouse

09: Me, obviously

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