So now I want to move to Byron Bay!!

On Monday I reluctantly left Sydney (my new favourite city!) to embark on a thirteen hour coach journey that I most certainly wasn't looking forward to. I always get restless enough on the four and a half hours from London to Leeds - how on earth was I going to cope with thirteen hours? Much to my surprise I wasn't bored for a second! Not only did we have a really entertaining driver who showed us 4 films and gave us frequent food stops, but the scenery we passed was just so beautiful that I spent the entire ride in awe. We drove up the Pacific Highway, first through beautiful mountains, then green farmland that became more and more tropical the further north we got. It was incredible how much the landscape could change in a thirteen hour drive. While at first I was getting excited about seeing cows and horses in the fields, by the end of the journey I was seeing families of kangaroos hopping around and banana trees! Neither of which I've ever seen before.

When I arrived at Byron Bay I was picked up and taken to my hostel - the Arts Factory Lodge - which honestly has to be the greatest hostel of all time...ever. I don't know if there's anything like it anywhere else in the world, and I'm not sure anyone could imagine it without seeing the reat thing, but it is a whole new universe in itself. For starters I've been staying in a giant 10 man teepee. The Arts Factory is situated about 10 minute walk from town, in the forest. As it's all pretty much outdoor open plan, walking around the hostel are turkeys and giant lizards. The common room area is basically hammocks hung from trees around a small lake - it's all just so chilled out and beautiful. On the walls that we do have are paintings of Buddha and other such things. However, like everywhere, this place is also made special by the people here. There are two main interesting characters of the Arts Factory - Che and Paul. Che sits by the volley ball pit with his digeridoos. He doesn't say anything much, just sits there playing digeridoo all day, and offers free lessons to anyone who wants to give it a go! Paul is the opposite of Che, loud and insane. You can always hear when he is nearby. Last night I walked into the bar and there he was, on stage, singing a song consisting of only the repeated words: "Cows go moo, cos there's nothing else to do". The night before I found him following a turkey round making turkey noises. Despite this seeming insanity, Paul offers a bushwalk three times a week which sounds really really good, unfortunately I didn't manage to go on one. He takes you around the surrounding forest and shows you how to make things out of plants - rope, soap, toilet paper, which ones you can eat, which ones have medicinal purposes, etc etc. Apparently the night I arrived they watched a snake eat a possum for about an hour.

So anyways on to Byron Bay itself. It's a lovely town, really friendly people (if total hippies), some great quircky shops, a great beach, and beautiful countryside all around. It's the kind of place that makes you want to drop everything and spend your life there, living in the forest, growing your own food and making a living off of selling slef-made bracelets on the beach.

As soon as I got to my teepee, I met a girl whose birthday it was. She invited me straight out to an infamous Byron Bay club - "Cheeky Monkeys". Of course I accepted. My friend Andrew had told me that I had to go here whilst in Byron Bay, and it seems to be the place everyone goes, but hates to admit they enjoyed. I bought a flashing cup that gets refilled with any spirit at a discounted price, then within minutes I was dancing on tables again. This seems to be an ongoing theme of Australian clubbing. The music was absolutely cringeworthy, but of course we all knew all the words and all acted like they were the greatest songs ever written. It was the type of night where you just have to let go, otherwise you will never enjoy it.

However as much as I was enjoying it, it soon started to eat up my money, so I left with a guy that I met (Mike) to go and find a bottle shop that might still be open. On our mission we met an old man with a long grey beard, a scottish accent and a cape. He told us that it was an eclipse of the moon that night, so we decided to give up our alcohol hunt and go to the beach to watch the eclipse. On arrival at the beach, someone else told us it was Bob Marley's birthday. So of course there were loads of people about with fires and guitars, singing Red Hot Chilli Peppers and other typical surfer music. It was a lovely atmosphere and well worth getting covered in sand for.

The following day all of us who had gone out the night before had horrendous hangovers, so we decided to visit this tea tree lake. It was a reasonably sized lake (for English standards but certainly not Canadian), surrounded by tea trees. The roots of the trees go into the lake, so all the water contains tea tree oil. We spent about two hours floating around in this lake. The water was so warm and soft, it was the most relaxing day ever. Afterwards my skin and hair felt incredible, softer than I could imagine skin and hair could get! Definitely a place to visit if in the Byron Bay area - it was only twenty minutes on the bus.

That night, to match the rest of our relaxing day we decided to go to the cinema in the Arts Factory. Best cinema in the world. Each person has a giant half-bed half-sofa to lie back in and a big comfy thing in front of you to put your feet up on. Don't think I have ever been so comfortable in my life.

On my second full day in the Byron Bay area, I had booked my self on "Jim's Alternative Tours" to Nimbin.... Another experience that is totally in a universe of it's own. We were all picked up in a big van, apparently the oldest public vehicle still on the road(!), by a hippy called Douggy. Throughout the journey, Douggy told us all about the uses of Marijuana, that it should be legalised, how the police and government are the real criminals, about the evil pharmaceutical companies, the evil "multi-national corporations"who are "rape pillage and plunder"ing the world. When he wasn't sharing his philosophical views with us, we had Pink Floyd or similar blasting out at full volume.

The first stop on our tour was the local pub, where we stocked up on alcohol for the rest of the trip, then we went on to the town of Nimbin. Now Nimbin is a bizarre place, it's almost like a museum town. It's just one small street really of cafes and tribal shops but the whole theme is of the cannabis culture. The entire population is hippies, or cannabis-culture tourists. People sit in the cafes smoking joints, and the workers of the cafes are all so stoned that you have to expect your food to take a long, long while...and don't be surprised if you get a completely different thing to what you ordered! The street is lined with people selling cannabis cookies and cannabis itself. You would think it is legal there, but the residents have a well working system of lookouts who shout "taxi" if the police are coming. We went to visit the Nimbin museum, for an optional donation of $2, but it was more of an art gallery in my opinion. It reminded me a bit of my bedroom when I was sixteen! - with anti-system protest art everywhere and hippy culture paraphanelia, mixed with lots of psychedelic art and random objects!

After the Nimbin stop the bus was a lot quieter.... We then drove to a beautiful rainforest. Douggy was telling us that the original people who lived in the area were "country-music-listening rednecks" and that the rainforest was due to be part of a major logging project. Thanks to him and his hippy friends tying themselves to trees and blockading the roads, the rainforest was saved and is now a national heretidge site. We went to a lookout point over the top of a 100m waterfall. It was absolutely stunning. You could see across the whole rainforest and beyond for miles and miles and miles. A real experience that makes everyone just stand silently in awe.

Following some much appreciated watermelon, we were on our way again to Douggy's friend's house! Now this guy was an even bigger hippy than Douggy. When we arrived he came to greet us with is waist length grey hair, beard and moustache, wearing only a baggy shirt and underpants! He showed us his "art collection" consisting of old fridges and stolen road signs, then took us to his house - a fairy light covered shed by a pond - where he fed us his home brewed beer and nuts.

Now as entertaining as Douggy's friend was as a person, the real reason we came to see him, was the land surrounding his house - which he had turned into a botanical garden, with over 5000 species of beautiful tropical plants (and the odd broken fridge scattered here and there. The plants were beautiful, but the best part of this walk through his garden was the giant iguanas we saw - about a metre long, darting across our paths to a safe distance up a tree where they could hiss at us!

A very unique trip there with Douggy, but an awesome experience.

On getting back for my last night in Byron Bay, the place I had fallen in love with, I decided it was going to have to be a crazy night. So I got messages to all the great friends I had made in this wonderful place and got a load of people to the common area of our hostel with a good few crates of wine to get the party started. The night ended up being a crazy one. I did go to Cheeky Monkeys at first but then Mike and I left for the beach, then his hostel where a few guys were still partying and I discovered the amazing fun you can have swinging about in a hammock....where I preceded to fall asleep until five minutes before I was due to check out of the Arts Factory!

I was so sad to leave Byron Bay, just as I was with Sydney. I booked the last possible bus to Surfers Paradise so that I could spend as much of the day exploring Byron Bay, the beach and the surrounding forest. Of course this just made me realise how much more there is to do there that I am missing out on. A pretty good excuse to come back! The scenery was beautiful and I took a ridiculous amount of photos (which will be uploaded to the net as soon as I figure out how to do it!) but the most amazing thing I saw unfortunately I couldn't take a photo of. It was standing on the most easterly point of mainland Australia, which happened to be, funnily enough, a cliff overlooking the sea. My friend had told me the night before that she had been hanggliding and seen lots and lots of sharks in the water, so I was looking down into the sea to see if I could spot any, and within a couple of minutes I saw two great white sharks! It was such an exciting experience, the water was so clear that you could really see what they were and they were awesome looking creatures. I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to see them in the wild like that.

Well that's Byron Bay done with, and I'm now using the hostel internet in Surfers Paradise...so far I'm not too sure about this place, after Byron Bay! It really is a bit of a party city and not loads else. There are a lot of nightclubs, theme/water parks and casinos...which does sound like my kind of place, but what one of the lads getting the car back to the hostel with me said...it's just like being in Malia or somewhere. Another person said that the type of people you get are young (i.e. 18) lairy Brit "yobbos" haha. I'm not sure if this is what I want nowadays, I prefer things to have a bit of soul, but I will get out there in the centre of the nightlife as usual and probably have a great time, just I doubt I will be as sorry to leave as I was with Sydney or Byron.

On a more positive side about Surfers, it seems like a totally mad place from what I've experienced so far - and that was only the journey from the coach station to the hostel. I was picked up in a limo that the hostel owns, along with 3 other girls. When the driver opened the trunk to put our luggage in, there were two guys lying in there! The driver had no idea, and this made him really jump...much to the guys in the trunks' amusement! Apparently they were bored waiting for their friend to pick them up some beers so they thought they'd hide in the trunk of the hostels limo....

Well we will soon see what Surfers has to offer.