Christmas in Byron Bay

After leaving the mountain we headed down to the coast to Byron Bay. We stopped off at a supermarket near Surfer’s Paradise on the way to get provisions for our Christmas dinner and were amazed at how much stuff was left in the shops and how little frantic last minute shopping was going on. Australians seem to have a much more relaxed attitude to Christmas, that or there just aren’t as many people here clambering to panic buy the last packet of ‘taste the difference mini organic chipolatas wrapped in free-range bacon' on the shelf. Either way, shopping on Christmas Eve has never been so stress free so we stocked up on Christmas goodies and headed down the coast.

Our beach hut was just behind the dunes on Tallow beach, about 7 kilometres from Byron. It was absolutely perfect for our needs; a large veranda, fancy gas barbeque, tennis courts, huge long sandy beach and nice comfy sofas...

Tallow Beach...

We spent Christmas morning on the beach, Santa had bought Matthew a bat and ball set which lasted less than a minute before the handles fell off, luckily David’s Frisbee lasted the course otherwise Santa would not have been shopping at ‘Crazy Clarks’ again…

Matthew and his bat and ball....

We opened presents on the Veranda in the afternoon..

The evening was dedicated to eating a variety of delicacies from the barbeque including barramundi fillets, roast sweet potato, king prawn skewers, a whole melted camembert with crusty bread and fresh sweet corn...

Christmas Dinner...

After that lot all we could do was sit down and watch ‘Elf’ on the laptop - an easy choice as Dave and I had both bought each other a copy for Christmas..

On Boxing Day we walked along the beach into Byron Bay which seemed a really nice place, full of ‘alternative’ types. It felt hippy and friendly whilst also seeming respectable.

For the next few days we played on the beach, body surfed, played tennis, ate lots of food and watched DVDs. Each morning we would decide to go out that night for a dance and each evening the thought of a 7km walk would send us scurrying to the sofa for more Christmas movies…

Dave gets to grips with body boarding ....

While Matt shows how it's done without the board...

Who are those guys?

We left Byron on the 28^th and headed inland to the mountains, we had been told that Nimbin, a hippy village in the hills, was worth a visit. We arrived and decided to go for a coffee to ‘starbuds’ coffee house, which smelt a little ‘earthy’. I overheard the couple next to us discussing the ‘low energy elemental beings’ the girl had been trying to get out of her kitchen for a few days and decided that it was probably best that we left. Outside on the street a keen young man asked us if we were ‘sorted’, we all nodded and walked off quickly wondering if we were ‘sorted’ – how would you know??

A bus in Nimbin...

We left Nimbin soon after, having discovered that, where Byron had found a line, Nimbin had stepped over it and sunk into skanky world that we didn’t want to understand…We got back to Brisbane, after a fantastic drive through the mountains, happy to have escaped without buying any crystals whatsoever or a ‘the pope smokes dope’ t-shirt. A quick sweep of the kitchen didn't find any low energy beings either, which was a relief...

Lamington

We set off to Lamington National Park a few days before Christmas with Dave, who had recently arrived from Alabama via Houston, Gatwick and most other major aiports...

We went to stay at O’Reilly’s guesthouse, which was established in the 1920’s when the O’Reilly family discovered that dairy farming on the top of a rainforest covered mountain, 3 days trek to civilisation wasn’t quite the walk in the park they had been led to believe. Luckily for them the 3 day hike didn’t put off enthusiastic bird watchers and the guesthouse is now a thriving business, especially as they completed a road to it in the 1970’s allowing truck loads of snap happy, day visitors up to the top of the mountain.

O’Reilly’s became really famous in the 1930’s when Bernard O’Reilly rescued two survivors of an aeroplane crash. The plane was thought to have gone down in the sea, but after a few days trekking through really dense rainforest, he found them. The survivors had been waiting ten days for rescue when he arrived and the only food he had taken with him was a bag of onions, imagine how pleased they were to see him!

The drive up to the forest is very winding and quite spectacular, taking you first through farmland, then dry eucalypt forest and then the massive trunks of the tropical rainforest.

Half way up the mountain we stopped by the side of the road to look at the view when a young guy screeched to a halt beside us and asked us if we could give him and his dad a hand with getting something off the back of his Ute. We agreed to meet him further up the road, a bit unsure that we weren’t about to have all of our money and clothes stolen. We got there to find a huge Harley Davidson on the back of a truck with James, the guy we had met and his Dad, Ian very frustrated. After a while the boys managed to help get the bike off the back of the truck. Meanwhile, I was being shown round by James’ mum, Marie. The house was nestled into the mountain side surrounded by eucalypt forest and the most amazing views down the valley to the gold coast. We stayed for lots of cups of tea, chocolate biscuits and great conversation. We left with an invite for lunch on Christmas eve, very happy to have met such lovely people.

O’Reilly’s was a fun-packed wildlife fest and we took full advantage of the free activities. We climbed 50 metres into the forest canopy....

Went on excellent guided walks....

This is looking out towards the gold coast...

Matt relaxing next to Elabana falls...

We missed the evening glow worm walk and slideshow as the lure of happy hour in the cocktail bar was far too strong….

In two days we saw trapdoor and funnel web spiders, regent and satin bowerbirds, whipbirds, green tree frogs....

.... pademelons, wallabies, skinks and shed loads of other birds. The guides really seemed to know their stuff and the only thing we were unsure about was the cheese and fruit they fed the birds to bring them close to the guesthouse. I’ve never seen an obese fruit dove before and its quite a sight!

We left O’Reillys on Christmas eve and headed back down the mountain to Ian and Marie’s where we met their friend 'Moses' and were fed sandwiches, home made scones and tea.

Christmas Eve..

Tour de Bridlington

As a step towards full cultural assimilation, we spent this weekend watching sport.

On Saturday, the lure of free tickets found us at our first Australian Cricket match. Queensland and Tasmania played a one day match at ‘The Gabba’ – Brisbane’s cricket and Aussie rules stadium.

It was only after we had agreed to go that I found out that the match lasted over 7 hours!! We arrived, armed with a good book and a crossword, to find the stadium packed and the game already underway.

The first few hours were quite slow, Steve and Ben, our more informed friends, explained what was going on. The highlight of the first half seemed to be the umpire falling over his feet, which caused massive hilarity in the crowd around us. The reaction to the clumsy umpire made us realise the volumes of Castlemaine XXXX being consumed around us. One group of lads, had already built an impressive metre tall tower of consumed beer cups and the day was young….

Cricket fans...


By the end of the first half, Queensland had finished batting and were 290 for 5. The half time entertainment was a throwing competition - this really is true... Spectators, who fancied themselves as a bit of a thrower, could go down onto the pitch and see how far they could lob a small plastic toy. The winner, whose toy nearly hit the other end of the stadium, won a hat – it was a white knuckle ride, I tell you…..

After the excitement of the interval, the cricket seemed a little dull, but fortunately they called the lucky programme number. Programme owners who hadn’t won, quickly unleashed a torrent of paper aeroplanes on to the pitch sending the ushers into a frenzy and the crowd wild. Next came the beach balls, which were thrown around the crowd until they fell onto the pitch and were confiscated by an usher, sparking a booooo of 15,000 voices…

After a few wrapped knuckles from the announcer, the attention once again returned to the cricket. Queensland got all of Tasmania out for 180 making the crowd very happy, if a bit wobbly, chappies - the beer tower, by this time, was approaching 2 metres tall and was looking as unsteady as its creators.

We left, full of cheap meat pies, happy to have won. The book hadn’t been touched and we were still two answers short on the crossword…

On Sunday, buoyed by our new sporting enthusiasm, we wandered down to the South Bank to watch the cycling Grand Prix (or a ‘pushy’ race..). The track was a fairly small block with two long straight sections and very tight corners at either end.
The guys cycling were serious sorts with very fancy bikes and tight shiny pants. A few of them had just returned from a season in Europe, including the Tour de France, so why they weren’t at home with their feet up and a nice cup of tea is beyond me.

In true Brisbane style, just before the race started, the heavens opened and it truly poured down, but utterly professional and seemingly unaware of the rain causing their small pants to become transparent, they all cycled at 60KPH round and round and round until lots of them had fallen off and hurt themselves. We were lucky enough to stand next to a very enthusiastic Canadian man, who explained what was going on and why they shave their legs – It’s got nothing to do with aerodynamics apparently – some waffle about making injuries easier to deal with – sounds dubious…

It was good fun to watch, from underneath an umbrella, but we were ready for a sit down and a slice of cake afterwards, so we went to a café and waited for the rain to stop. Luckily we got bored of waiting and made a run for it, because we would have been there yet…

It’s still showing no sign of getting sunny, but as we have proved ourselves incompetent with sun cream, its probably best…

'Straddie'

This weekend we went to ‘Straddie’ to celebrate Matthew’s birthday. Straddie is a big sandy island just off the coast near Brisbane. Its real name is North Stradbroke Island, but the Australians can’t resist a nice bit of word shortening, for example, you buy fish off the ‘fisho’, A chemist makes up your ‘scripts’, your annual car tax is your ‘Rego’ and if something is quite pricey its ‘Exxy’. Once you get the hang of it its quite easy….

Anyway, ‘Straddie’ used to be joined to South Stradbroke island by a narrow sand bar and, according to the tourist books, a storm in 1898 tore through the sand dune creating the two islands. What they don’t mention is that, just prior to the storm, a ship containing shed loads of dynamite had run aground on the sand bar and, rather than removing the dynamite from the ship, they blew it all up destroying the ship and most of the dunes around it making it an easy job for the storm to do its work.

We decided to head off to the island on our new posh bikes to give them a test drive. After a 45 minute trip on an ancient vehicle ferry that bent alarmingly in the middle, we arrived on the island to find that the Aussie’s love of exploding things hadn’t done any permanent damage to the beauty of the island.

The beaches are fantastically long, white and sandy and the vast majority of the dunes and vegetation at the back of the beaches were still intact and hadn’t succumbed to the high rise horror of the Gold Coast or the luxury ‘boutique’ apartments of Noosa. The hilly and forested interior of the island is pretty much untouched except for large sand mining operations on the south of the island.

Our B&B was about 20kms ride from the ferry at a pace called Point Lookout on the north eastern corner of the island. It had great views out over Shag Rock (real name!) which made up for the fact that it happened to be located on the top of the steepest hill in Queensland (this is, as yet, unconfirmed but very likely).

We arrived on Friday evening and drank wine whilst watching the sun set – ever so sophisticated …. The next morning we woke up to a symphony of bird noises and then ate our way through a monster fried breakfast on the veranda of our B&B. We asked Jan, the owner, about the birds that we had heard that sounded like monkeys, she laughed and told us that the previous day a group of holidaying Americans and thought the noises actually were monkeys – the uniqueness of Australia’s marsupial mammals obviously having bypassed them. Unfortunately they had left before we arrived, probably to look for tigers….

Breakfast on the Veranda

We spent the whole of Saturday exploring Point Lookout on foot (the thought of getting back on our bikes at this point was enough to make our bums cringe in ways we didn’t think possible). Walking round the headlands overlooking the fantastic beaches was great and we spent a good few hours strolling, enjoying the sunshine and watching a pod of dolphins playing in the waves. We then went down to the beach to have a swim and watch the surfers strut their stuff. It was only after an amble down and endless stretch of beach that we discovered that we hadn’t been quite as comprehensive with the sun cream as we thought. After legging it back to the B&B to assess the damage we discovered that rather than bronzed beach babes we were the proud owners of a fetching stripy chest and back (Sam) and Blackpool-rock-pink neck, forearms and back of knees (Matthew) – D’oh!!

A big long beach from the headland



On Sunday we set off early to cycle to Amity on the North Western tip of the island along an unused road. It had once been the only road on the island, but after the bitumen roads were built in the 60s it had been relegated to ‘4WD track’, a favourite of holidaying Aussies. The road is now no longer maintained by the council, which means that fallen trees are not moved out of the road stopping even the most dedicated 4x4er in his/her, rather chunky, tracks.

The road was fantastic, it was mainly rocky and gravely but also sandy in some places too – testing our fancy new bikes out ( and the soreness of our bums). It was superb to be somewhere so deserted. The road skirted the back of a long area of swamp behind the beach and the air was filled with the noises of bush life- a welcome change to the humming of a land cruiser….

Here is a picture of the track….



Although it made for a magical trip, the fact that we were probably the first people to go down the track in a while had its drawbacks and at one memorable moment I was pedalling along and felt something hit me. The realisation that, not only was I covered in spiders web, but that the owner of the web was resting on my ankle, obviously waiting to reek revenge for me destroying his home, hit me quite suddenly.
Very calmly I stopped my bike and screamed like a girl until Matthew deftly flicked it off my leg and stamped on it in a manly way. I did feel a bit guilty about completely ruining the spider’s day, but you can’t be too sure with these fancy Australian types.

Birthday boy with our trusty steeds



We made it back to civilisation without any other close brushes with the native fauna and spent a few hours resting in the shade before getting back on our bikes and hacking back to the ferry which managed, with a few creak and groans, to get us home.