Hippies Down Under: Byron and Nimbin

I went on a road trip with 7 other friends this past weekend, and after a fair bit of trouble at the car rental place (clerk with the grossest mullet/rattail i have seen kept adding random fees to our bill), we piled into our awesome minivan and headed down to Byron Bay in New South Wales. Byron is a chill place, I wrote about it before when I visited at the beginning of the year, but this trip we got to spend more time hanging out there and it was very chill. We got in the first day and just hung out at the beach. The main beach there is probably my favorite beach, we had a great time swimming and bodysurfing, the waves are just perfect and the water is so clear. We went up to the lighthouse around 5:30 to watch the sunset, which was very beautiful. The lighthouse area is the most eastern point in Australia. There is a sign pointing this out, and it's funny to see all the tourists lining up and taking pictures with it. I hiked around the paths there with my friend Jess a bit looking for whales, but didn't see any. They are supposed to arrive in May, but I guess they are taking their time to get to the bay. We went back to the downtown area and met up with some other UQ students (about 15 of them) that had a house rental where we hung out for the night and crashed on their floor (My friend and I thought sleeping in the van the first night would be a great idea, but it turned out to be freezing cold all night and got super bright at about 5:30 in the morning). They were cool people, mostly internationals, but there were a couple Aussies from Cromwell College as well. The Aussies made a mix of 'goon punch' in the wastebasket (bin), which I was quite impressed by. It was 4 or so boxes of goon, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, and some juice mixer, plus teabags! In a wastebasket! I thought the teabags were an interesting addition, but they said its totally normal and they do it all the time.

The next day we took a shuttle bus over to Nimbin, which is about an hour and a half inland from the coast. Nimbin is a very small town of about 500 people, but it is a very famous spot that is mecca for the hippie/stoners of Australia. It's similar to Haight/Ashbury or Venice Beach. The Mardi Grass festival was going on there this weekend, and many other people were camping out there or traveling over for the day. On the bus ride in, our driver made an announcement over the intercom that the police were searching every vehicle to come into Nimbin for drugs. Apparently, the police wanted to make a statement about this event and crack down on substance abuse, so they sent a really big force over to the town this weekend. It was sweet! A drug sniffing labrador came onto the bus and checked us all out. He honed right in on this one guy that had to be taken outside and searched, but he ended up not having anything. We went on and got dropped off at the street and wandered around Nimbin for the afternoon. There were markets there selling random souvenir stuff in addition to the permanent businesses on the street. My friend Alex bought these crazy psychedelic silky pants because he felt like he had to fit in with the crowd more. There was music going on in the 'peace park', and I spent some time listening to some crazy bands. One that stuck out was Wild Marmalade, a didgiridoo player that was just jamming out with this really great drummer. I hadn't heard anything quite like it before, it was very tribal sounding, but also funky. He got some really crazy sounds out of the didg. The 'hemp olympics' were also going on, where there were bong throwing contests and other random events. There was also a parade later on in the day, which was pretty amusing. I missed part of it, but I got to see the procession of naked old people walking through town, as well as a bunch of girls dressed like green faeries. It was quite the experience, lots of dreadlocks and beards and hemp clothing all around. There were cops everywhere, and I thought it was funny that for an event that was pretty much devoted to stoners, I didn't see anyone around smoking. Most concerts I've been to have had more drugs than the Mardi Grass festival, how ironic. It was a good day, I mostly enjoyed the music going on all over the place (bands would just set up on the streets and play), and people were telling me that the scene at Nimbin was how most of the corporate music festivals started out. It was cool to see a different sort of event that is not shoving sponsors or other commercialized things down your throat the whole time. It was very community oriented, the town organizes the whole thing and it seemed to run smoothly and people were having a good time.

The next morning, I woke up early and jogged over to the lighthouse to just hang out there some more because its such a peaceful place. After fighting over floor space and blankets the last couple nights, it was nice to just have space and quiet for a bit. We spent the rest of our time swimming at the beach, which was a lot of fun. I would say it was a great weekend, lots of good times and pretty cheap all around as well (costs tend to go down when you sleep in cars and on floors, good for future reference), you can't go wrong.


Pictures are: friends up at the lighthouse, the most eastern point of Australia, guy with beard rocking out on a hand drum, drug sniffing dog, festival people dressed up, and goon punch creation.