Topping up the Soul

I will start this next blog with an admission. I am shamelessly biased towards our next destination, and nothing anyone can ever do or say will change this stance. Byron Bay is my kindred home and the one place we’ve visited where I think I could happily relocate and forget about the real world. It is my headquarters for hedonism, my centre for self-indulgence and my dwelling of decadence. There is not much to report in terms of sheer blog space; Byron is not a place for accomplishment or hyperactivity. Our hostel was the perfect accompaniment to the Byron experience, and we owe to it a lot of the credit for the great time we all had. With a private room, swimming pool, healthy supply of hammocks, private beach and clean kitchen, we were able to exist in perfect bliss for the entirety of our 4 day stay. It was also at this hostel that I met Dom, Olivia, Owen and Laura who we’re hoping to meet up with in New Zealand and who we ended up attaching ourselves to semi-permanently in Sydney, although that is not to be discussed in the same breath as Byron! I will attempt to elaborate on the awesome time we had in Byron, including our day trip to Nimbin, which wins some form of accolade for strangest town ever to be visited, but I’ll save that bit for last.

This blog will have no hint, nor attempt, at a timeline. It doesn’t matter in which order or on which day we did specific things, such is the way of Byron! There were merely highlights, and some good ones at that! I will have to start, as my friends know I have to, with the fish tacos. These fish tacos are not only the best fish tacos I’ve ever had, I am assured they are the best fish tacos in the world. A thin soft wrap filled with barramundi, lettuce, coleslaw, sour cream and salsa, needless to say, this is the way to win my heart. It’s hard to keep track of the exact quantity of fish tacos that were enjoyed during our stint in Byron, double figures are clear, but as for any more detail, it gets a bit cloudy. I can easily consider the gang to be converted to their wonder; it only pains me that I may never have them again. But, if ever there was a primary reason to go back to Byron, I can’t say fish tacos are definitely it... But they’re a solid contender!  The hostel’s private beach was also a great way to spend a day or so. The main beach at Byron is just as beautiful, if not more beautiful with its turquoise blue waters, abundance of surfer ladies and the border of the lighthouse cliff to the right of the beach. But, in the middle of the summer, it is also two additional things

1)      Busy

2)      Home to a host of pythons during breeding season

I am not going to lie that I was more deterred by the crowds than the pythons, but I will at least admit that this exposes a great weakness in my balance of priorities. I stand by the fact I was bothered by the business of the beach on multiple occasions, but the pythons never once got in my way, this to me is validation enough. However, our private beach was innocent on both of these charges and gave us a great way to see out the days. The photos don’t do it justice (strange how they rarely do!) but we had some great times there and I’m glad to report... Not a hint of sunburn, I’m getting better at this it seems!

Other highlights include a bar called Rails, which is based in an old train station, complete with un-used train tracks outside the front of the bar. Rails is home to perpetual live music, as music is the prevailing main occupation for all Byronites,  has a great atmosphere and relatively cheap Australian beer, these features are mostly all I look for in bars, so it was the perfect watering hole for whenever we had a tickle in our throat. I also made good use of the Rainbow shop, home to the most grotesque, garish and appalling clothing you can find outside of civilised society. A particular rainbow coloured hairband proved to be one of my favourites, I even find myself wearing it now as I type, I do sometimes wonder how I will ever return to normalised society again though... The last of the features of justifiable note was our trip on the Happy Bus to Nimbin, which forms the prelude to one of the weirdest road trips I’ll ever undertake.

Nimbin is a small hippy commune in the hills, 2 hours outside of Nimbin. And when I say hippy, I mean hippy in Byron terms, so read it as hippies that, as far as they’re aware, still believe it is the summer of love 1969 and Hendrix is still recording away in some studio outside of L.A. The fact that we were being picked up by the Happy Bus peaked our intrigue, but we mostly shrugged it off as some corporate branding. We were in for quite the surprise. At 10am, the closest thing to a tie-dyed school bus turned up at our hostel, and two heavily dreadlocked gents stepped out and took our names. We climbed inside the bus and every inch was decorated with music and bands stickers from all over the 50s-80s accompanied with a nice purple/brown interior. Our guide then sat at the front, did a headcount, told 10 one-liner jokes then left, this was the last time we’d see him for the rest of the trip! The remaining dreadlocker, an old Jamaican gent named George (or Judge if you can’t quite get your ears around the accent) took over and we headed off to Nimbin! Nimbin itself consists of a single highstreet with a cumulative total of colour which the entirety of London would struggle to be able to reach. The only prevailing sites were pictures of Bob Marley, marijuana leaves and peace symbols and the only people were zombified versions of real people staring at nothing but Bob Marley, marijuana leaves and peace symbols. As you walked down you received a collection of murmurs, grunts and hyper-smiles (as they have been dubbed), but aside from the odd noise, the entire village was silent filled with the closest thing to corpses that I have ever seen walking around. Needless to say, Nimbin is infamously populated with drug problems, and not just the green stuff, if ever the governments of the world are needing a powerful anti-drug initiative, just film a Nimbin documentary, I can assure you it’ll get the message across!

And, with a collection of these highlights above, we concluded our stay in Byron. And had the prospect of a 14 hour trip to Sydney on the horizon. It was a rather down-spirited sort of final evening at the prospect. Not only were we leaving Byron, not only were we headed from Byron to Sydney but we were also headed from Byron to Sydney for the last city of the Australian leg of our tour. I was down to the final 2 months of my travels and into the last three countries before the inevitable return to dreary England. We were filled with such feelings of doubt, worry and doom but for some reason, one simple walk down the streets of Nimbin later we were carefree and hypersmiley again... A truly weird place indeed!

R