The weekend began on Thursday night as Natalie, Amber, and I made our way into town to the bus terminal to catch our overnight bus. Byron Bay is located about 9 hours north of Newcastle slightly below the boarder where the state New South Wales turns into Queensland. However, since the bus stopped at numerous east coast cities along the way, the ride took about 11 hours total. Trust me, it is by no means comfortable sleep, but all I could think was “I should take these overnight buses more often… I could save like $30 from not having to pay for another night in a hostel!” I mean I figure you’re never really very productive on a bus anyway, so waste precious daytime on a bus? It’s sorta funny… I’ve began to notice how travelling has completely changed my perspective on how I spend money. I will gladly dish out hundreds of dollars to skydive or learn to surf, but I refuse to splurge on “essentials” like food and accommodation. Save $12 by sharing a hostel room with 4 strangers? The more the merrier! Save $25 by eating PB & J for 2 meals a day? No worries!
Anyway, as we stepped off the bus around 8 AM, still half-asleep and grumpy, we were bombarded by these people with huge signs advertising the different hostels in the area. But this time I actually did my research, and we knew that we wanted to stay at the Byron Bay YHA so the girl holding the YHA surfboard kindly pointed us in the right direction. After we checked into our room and looked around, we were much happier with this hostel choice. We relaxed on the hammocks and pillows for about a half an hour until we received a call that the Skydive Byron Bay van was waiting for us downstairs. The next few hours of the day is already accounted for in my skydiving blog from last week….scroll down a few to hear all about that!
So fast forwarding a little bit… when we got back to the hostel we were now full of energy, so we quickly showered and then set off to explore the city of Byron Bay. Byron is a neat town (population about 5,000) with a very down-to-earth, friendly vibe. It’s recently become a popular stop for backpackers traveling the east coast. It was honestly probably my favorite city that I’ve visited in Australia thus far, which is why I was heaps excited to hear I’d be back there in a month for surf camp! Anyway, one of the standard things that you must do in Byron is take a walk to the Cape Byron Lighthouse situated on the most easterly point in Australia, known to be one of the brightest lighthouses in all of Oz. Rodger, our driver from Skydive Byron Bay told us that the walk would take about 1 hour. When we were on the beach, I could clearly see the lighthouse on the top of the cliff and thought to myself “Oh it’s not that far.” Well, I was wrong. Getting to this lighthouse was like getting to the Emerald City. We kept walking, and walking, and walking, but it wasn’t getting any closer! Nonetheless, we had a good time (and a good workout) walking along the beach, up cliffs, down cliffs, through parks, until we finally made it about 2 hours later (I always seem to forget that Aussies underestimate everything). Again refusing to pay for a bus, we walked back which took us through a different part of Byron and we were able to check out some fancy, beach side houses where the garages were filled not with cars, but with surfboards.
Nimbin: The W
eirdest Place on Earth No visit to Byron Bay is complete without a day trip to Nimbin, Australia. Nimbin is a small town about 1.5 hours West of Byron. To explain, the story goes that a group of Uni students from Sydney were looking for somewhere to hold an Age of Aquarius music festival in 1973. At the time, Nimbin was a sleepy dairy town so spying a bit of cash to be made, the locals welcomed the newcomers with open arms. So the students descended, painted the street shops with suitable hippy, trippy murals and ended up staying in the town. The area is part of what is known as the “Rainbow Region” with a current population of 352 and has become a haven for Australia’s counterculture in the recent decades. In fact, I reckon Nimbin is probably the only place where the counterculture IS the dominant culture. It really is a place that needs to be seen to be believed.
We got picked up at our hostel on Saturday morning around 10:00 AM by a huge, multicolored rainbow bus blasting some funky tunes. There were a few different companies that run similar day trips to Nimbin, but we booked through Grasshoppers because we
heard it was the best one (plus lunch was included, and there’s nothing more attractive to a traveler than the promise of free food!). The bus then stopped at all the hostels in Byron to pick up others for the tour. The tour was actually overbooked with probably 50+ people crammed on the bus, so Morgan the driver bribed a few people $10 to sit on an eskie (cooler) in the isle for the ride. Every single person on the tour with us was a backpacker/traveler and between the ages of about 18-28. Since there were 3 of us, I offered to sit alone in my own seat; however, when the bus started to fill up I moved over so that someone could sit next to me. I ended up having the pleasure of sitting next to a guy named Colman, a backpacker from Ireland spending the last week of his year long travels in Byron Bay. Since the trip out to Nimbin took a little under 2 hours, we had a great time talking with Colman and I actually learned a great deal about Irish culture that day. Did you know that Irish is actually a language and that they really don’t eat corned beef and cabbage? I was fooled.When we finally arrived in Nimbin, I stepped off the bus and the town just screamed HIPPIE. It would probably have to be the most colorful town in Australia with the rainbow colors of the shops and houses, to the outrageous clothes the locals were wearing, and the psychedelic paintings over the shop entrances. I was in the hippie capital of Australia. We only had about an hour to explore Nimbin, but that was more than enough time. The town is basically just one street long with various shops, cafes, and tie-dye wearing dreadlocked hippies. The town has a “museum” which was basically just an explosion of art, random quotes, and a campervan half in and out of the shop. I didn’t really go in all the way because they expected a $2 donation and I wasn’t really too keen on giving this town any of my money.
I don’t even know how to really know how to further describe this odd place, but it sure did have character to say the least. I think the culture of Nimbin can be best understood through the "Nibim Street Code" which I found in 3 differnece places in the small town. My favorite line being, "keep Nimbin funky, friendly, and free." If you have a look at my Photobucket pictures, you might be able to get a better vibe for the town. Nimbin…a strange place indeed.
So we all piled back into the bus and drove about half an hour to a location where Morgan cooked everyone a barbie and we all just hung out. I really enjoyed meeting other interesting backpackers from England, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, and everywhere in between. Then finally we hopped on the bus again to travel to our final destination, Minyon Falls.
This drive back takes you through the World Heritage Nightcap National Park and on to the spectacular Minyon Falls. At first we were a bit confused because we pulled onto the side of the road near some woods, but we just followed a walking trail for about 3 minutes till we got to the falls. I had never seen an actual natural waterfall before, which was a pretty cool sight and then there was a swimming hole area below. Luckily we brought our swimmers so we could jump off!
I was heaps excited to jump, but everyone who went before kept saying how extremely freezing the water was. Once I got up to the top of the cliff I was completely terrified to jump down. Yesterday I jumped 14,000 feet out of a plane, but today I’m scared to jump off a 20-foot cliff? It probably didn’t help that the entire bus was watching as an audience from below. But all I could think was that I was in Australia… and in Australia you have to give everything a go. So I jumped. And the water WAS completely freezing. But it was SO fun! It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to jump off a natural waterfall aye?
Saturday night we went to a backpackers hangout called Cheeky Monkeys where we ran into about half of the Nimbin tour bus AND the 3 people we went skydiving with! We then decided that since we were at the most easterly point in Australia and since the sun rises in the east….that we should wake up and see the sunrise. So at about 5:30 AM we dragged ourselves out of bed and walked down to the beach. The sunrise lasted from about 5:45-6:15 and we couldn’t believe how many people were at the beach ALSO watching the sunrise. I had never seen a sunrise before, so that was another awesome first to add to my list.
After taking a morning nap, we decided that after 2 jam-packed, adventure filled days we would spend Sunday relaxing until our time in Byron was up. And what place could be more relaxing than the beach? Byron has a huge beach culture, and we could really tell by the hundreds of people at the beach that day doing everything from surfing, tanning, body boarding, building sand castles, etc. So after catching a little bit of sun (and some zzz’s), we ate lunch at a Middle Eastern café recommended by the locals called “Orgasmic.” I’m not quite sure if the food lived up the café’s name, but it was still pretty good. After doing some last minute exploring, we headed to the bus terminal to prepare for another 11-hour bus ride back. Finally, at about 4:30 AM I was back in my bed at Teds and slept until Monday afternoon. It was quite the expensive weekend, but by far an unforgettable one.
Getting to this lighthouse was like getting to the Emerald City. We kept walking, and walking, and walking, but it wasn’t getting any closer! :))
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