Byron Bay

Greetings! We are here in Byron Bay, drug capital of Australia, destination of all school leavers after exams (which is sadly now) and home to the Byron Bay Hat Company. It is lurvely!

First though, I will show you something of the Bellingen area's loveliness, where we were before, without internet. Or phone signal. Sometimes even the sat nav couldn't find us.

We found a slow-flowing, crystal clear river to swim in called Never Never Creek.

It has a good rope swing at this bit, and rocks to sun yourself on.

Here is a picture of Zappa in the river

because NEWSFLASH, we bought an underwater digital camera!!!

There it is. Isn't it beautiful and green? I love it so much. I know it's extravagent but Zappa said he'd totally do some extra days work for it. YAY



Something not so beautiful and green (well, that's debatable I suppose) was our next critter. I was scared one night when what looked like a huge dog poo on a step suddenly jumped up to the next step. In the morning the culprit was revealed!

Also, the Bellingen Community Market was on while we were there, to our good fortune.

It was really wonderful, like a mini glastonbury festival, but just the shopping and bits of food. In the photo is a guy playing the didjeridoo and the hang! (pronounced hung, very hard to obtain instrument). I bought a couple of tops, some thai fishermans trousers and the short skirt version, and some very natural peanut butter which was going cheap as it was past its sell-by date (still not that cheap, ah well, I liked it and its naturalness), which made me feel extremely sick for hours after eating as part of my lunch, and has lurked in the cupboard ever since as I don't really want to try it again to make sure it was evil, but I can't bear to throw it away in case it wasn't.

I digress.

We pootled up the Pacific Highway, passing the Giant Prawn, which I'm sure was in Endless Summer II, I was so excited.



It was a rainy miserable day which was nice for me as a passenger because we didn't expire from heat exhaustion in Dingo, but not so good for the driver because of the whole visibility thing (I'm sure this visibility thing is a myth, don't you just FEEL where to go?), and not so good for the blood samples courier in front of us when the rain had dissolved the road into, er, offroad, which was quite a bone-shaking ride for a few hundred metres.

Anyway Byron Bay, it is good. The beach and supermarket have been prettty insanely busy this weekend, but what with all the schoolies, what do you expect. The surf was nice and gentle, we went out to a couple of spots. Ray is our new surf coach. The tip we learnt today (amongst others) was that if you want to get a parking spot, you get there before 8am.

Noish. The beach is usually much more existent than this apparently, this was a super high tide. I actually surfed a little bit at the second spot! Ray brought us a biiig learners rubber-topped board to play with, which I loved, much more what I'm used to. It's like catching a train. It got a bit exhausting lugging it out through the white water though, Zappa's is muuuch much lighter and easier to turn, but not as easy to catch waves with.

We went off in search of the famous lighthouse, and found it.

And had a lovely view of the beaches on the way back down.

Ahh well after not having computery technologicalities for so long my eyes are feeling rather square. I shall retire. Enjoy.