Before I left England, I had in my mind a list of some of the places that I wanted to see while I was over here. One of those places was Byron Bay, which I finally staggered into late last Sunday.
Getting here was quite a mission. A wise man would have checked the journey time before booking accomodation at the other end. A wise man would have seen that, due to the rather stately speed of Australia's trains, it took thirteen hours to travel from Sydney to Casino, the nearest station. A wise man would have then booked the overnight train, leaving himself plenty of time to get to the station for departure, saving himself a nights accomodation and letting him find his hostel at the other end during daylight hours. I am not a wise man. I am a tit who almost missed his train through sleeping in and had to peg it to central station carrying a full backpack with no socks on my feet. Thirteen hours is a good while to spend on a train. I passed the time by pretending that I was on the Hogwarts Express. Then I remembered that I'm a grown man, and so instead passed the time by pretending that I was on my way to a workplace synergy conference, where I would get too drunk and end up having shameful, mutually unfulfilling sex with Margaret, the horsey faced woman from my office, before returning home to a wife I can't even stand to be in the same room as any more. Then I tried to get some sleep.
Byron itself is a very nice, attractive seaside town. It obviously makes it's money from tourists,but is nowhere near as crass as Cairns, that other stop off on the back packer trail. The beach here was voted the sexiest in the world, ahead of such big names as Bondi, Malibu and Skegness, though the overall sexiness probably dropped a few points when I waddled onto it with my shit hair and permanently running nose. I have a vague ambition to try surfing at some point, but the constant rain has put me off the idea a bit (I realise that water from the sky shouldn't really be a deterrent for an activity that involves jumping into the sea, but there you go).
The hostel I'm staying at is teaming with Goddamn Hippies. Which is fine, though I myself do not make a particularly good hippy, I suspect I'm too uptight. It's pleasant enough though and has all the amenities you could want and even some you might not, like digeridoo lessons.
In the interest of interest I took a day trip up to Nimbin. Nimbin, for those that don't know, is a small village a few miles outside of Lismore. The place was dying a slow death when students held the Aquarius Festival. Since then it's found a new lease of life as a haven for Goddamn Hippies and is Australia's unofficial weed capital. The inhabitants seem a fairly politically active bunch, but only about Marijuana legalisation. Marijuana is, of course, as illegal there as it is everywhere else in the country, but if one where inclined to partake of the herb one wouldn't find it especially hard to get hold of and I must have been approached by dealers a dozen times in the twenty minutes it took me to walk down the main street. After a little while it became slightly irritating and so ducked into the Museum of Nimbin which was cool enough, but rather appropriately slightly unfocused and rambling. Also - and I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning - but there was a lot of three legged dogs around. I counted at least three in the two hours I spent in this community of a few hundred people. By way of contrast I counted exactly zero in the six months plus I spent in the teeming metropolis of Sydney. I don't want to be casting aspersions here, but I think... *looks around to make sure no-one else is listening and drops voice*... I think the hippies might be eating them.
Tomorrow I head on up to Brisbane. The Splendor in the Grass Festival kicks off in Byron this weekend and as such there is no room at the inn. I am therefore clearing out of town for the duration of the cool alternative music festival, but shall be returning in a weeks time for the more cerebral delights of the annual writers festival. This probably says more about me than I'm willing to admit.
Love and Fishes
Dave Denton.
P.S. I have received news from Bob. Having gone through weeks of negotiations with our former employes in Queensland, they have now agreed to sign him off for seven days a week he's legally entitled to as opposed to the five they originally gave us. With the additional days we worked in Tasmania this puts him a few days shy of the 88 he needs to extend his visa. Whether he's still going to fly all the way to Griffith and then fly back again a few days later remains to be seen, but it seems likely that I will be seeing him again before I leave.
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