Byron Bay

We pulled up in Byron Bay today. From what we heard it was meant to be similar to Nimbin, in the way that it was very relaxed, and the population has a penchant for locally grown weed!

We arrived in the afternoon. Myself and Christy were a little behind the rest so we arranged to meet up with them in one of the car parks by the sea. By the time we arrived, we could tell it was a big tourist attraction, especially compared to Nimbin. It was nice and clean, and really small, and the whole town was full of visiting campers, ranging from Wicked Vans drivers like ourselves, to full winnabagos driven by middle aged couples.

The town itself was just like any regular small town we encountered. It had its coffee shops, its supermarkets, few pubs etc. The only difference really being the locals. They had managed to combine the "hippy" lifestyle of Nimbin, with a more civilised, more mainstream lifestyle, probably due to the good surf experinced there, which brough all sorts of people to the town, and obviously you can't really surf too well if you're half baked all the time! Not safely anyway! :p

The beaches were nice, the town was nice and its most famous atraction, the lighthouse, was worth the few dollars entry fee into the car park! The lighthouse was situated at the cliffhead up atop the hill. From here, you can see for miles out into the sea. This is good whale watching country, as wel as for watching dolphins. I can see why, as it is surrounded by water on nearly all sides. You've got about a 300 degree view of the water.

We had a look around, took some photos, and headed back, but not before seeing what we thought was a snake. We thought we saw out first snake of the whole trip...but alas, as we got closer, we saw it had legs. Just another salamander, or whatever they're called! :p

We headed back to town after a while to look for accomodation. The place seemed quite busy so hopefully we could get accomodation without too much hassle. We went back to the road and start asking in a few places. They were all full. We even had trouble finding parking around the town. We wanted to stay here the night so we probably would have found a spot on the side of the road somewhere if we were stuck. After all, we were in camper vans, so we may as well get some use out of them. Luckily, we found a caravan park a few minutes out of Byron Town. We stayed there the night and headed off in the morning. Byron was a nice little town but we decided to head on down the highway, and see where it took us...