Byron Bay

I took a trip up north about 3 hours to Byron Bay this past weekend. My friend Lindsay knew a guy that was traveling up that way, and 4 of us from Union got a ride with him there and then bought bus tickets to get back home. It was a beautiful place, definitely one of the nicest beaches I have ever been to, if not the best. The water was warm and it was about 105 degrees outside, so a good day to go swimming. Lindsay's friend Steve had some surfboards too, but there were not very many waves at all, so that didn't really happen. We stopped in Surfer's Paradise on the way up, which is only about an hour away from where I live, and that was a great beach too. There is a huge city in Surfer's Paradise, a lot of high rise apartment buildings and a big downtown. Byron is more like Santa Cruz, a smaller town with a lot of hippies. Everywhere you go there are street musicians (they call them buskers), even a guy playing processed music with his digiridoo. A lot of tourists go through there, I think one guy said something like 5,000 people per week? There are a lot of hostels and backpackers all around.

We stayed at the coolest hostel ever. It was called the Arts Factory and it was a couple blocks outside the main area of town. They had a chill spot with hammocks, an indoor area with pool tables, a bar, and an area where they did workshops like learn to massage or build your own digiridoo. You could stay in the main lodge area, or they also had this option to stay in the 'islands', which were these huts that looked like covered wagons out over this marshy area. You walked out on a wood plank walkway to get to your little place, and they were really neat. We crammed all 5 of us into a two bedroom place and it was a cozy night for sure. When we first went by the room, there was a spider about the size of my palm on one of the beds. Steve trapped it in the trash can and got it outside, and we thankfully did not see any more of those the rest of the time there.

The city had a cool night life, we went to this bar for their $2 dinners, but Lindsay and I ended up eating free dinner at the seven day adventist church. For some reason they were giving away free soup and toast and playing projecting sports videos on their wall. Cool church, nice people, and they didnt even talk to us about converting or God or anything. Good deal. We went and hung out on the beach after that with a bunch of other Canadians mostly that a guy with us knew (they travel in huge packs, i look around and realize there are like 20 of them around me, weird). It was a really nice night, just a bunch of people out on the beach. The guys picked up some 'goon', this box wine that is the only affordable alcohol in Australia, its $8 for 4 liters. That's how you know it's quality for sure. They call it goon and make punch with it and its pretty awful stuff. About the same as Franzia, but ugh, just sortof sickening. I didnt really drink that night, I was just happy with being outside and hanging out with people. We slept allright then got on the bus the next day back to Brisbane, it was a cool trip for sure, but would have liked to spend more time there, another day at least. It was a bit last minute planning and could have been done better, but all in all was a very cool weekend.


These pictures are: beach, our island hostel room, very mellow iguana in the hostel yard, Lindsay with indigenous child mural, and more pictures from the beach.