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Other entries in Byron Bay

This place is wicked....but I don't know why!?

When we arrived in Byron Bay, I was shocked to see how small it was. I was expecting it to have a huge seafront with rows of bars and clubs. It pretty much had 1 main nightclub on the end of the main highstreet called Cheeky Monkeys where every single backpacker in Byron Bay congregates every night (its quite a legendary venue amongst backpackers!) Luckily our hostel also happened to be directly opposite it 10m the other side of the road! On the first night, Trevor managed to get himself thrown out for being too drunk! We'd only been in there 10 minutes! Coincidentally the bouncers chucked out 3 other guys at the same time and let 4 girls in from the queue outside! They really need another club in Byron Bay because you can't move in Cheeky Moneys after 10pm! I erckon the Byron Bay mafia stop anyone else building a club so they can get a packed house night after night! Theres no other explanation because so many people come here. Its quite a cool club though because it has no dancefloor! At 10:00am, all the tables tops stop being for eating/drinking and become the dancefloor! It was pretty funny seeing all the really drunk people fall off the tables taking everyone in there path with them in a domino effect! I became a regular at the local chip shop every night after the club, pretty much on every one of the 5 nights we were in Byron Bay! I think the guy who was serving knew what I wanted as soon as I walked in the door! I then used to go sit on the beach in the dark and watch the lighthouse go round and round!One night at Cheeky Monkeys, Trevor managed to get down to the last 3 out of 5 to win a skydive over Byron Bay! You had to keep fetching stuff from the crowd and the last one to return got eliminated. To start with I had to chuck him my shirt onto the stage! It came down to 2 girls in the end who had to make the longest line they could out of all theor clothes! One of them had literally one thing on by the end and had to do her best to cover the rest with her arms!

We had a couple of days on the beach which was really nice (during the day the beach is pretty much your only option! The bay itself is beautiful because on one side you have a big mountain range, and on the other side you have the lighthouse on Cape Byron (the most easterly point of the Australian mainland) I went for a walk along the beach to the lighthouse with this Dutch girl who was also staying in our dorm. The view of the bay at the top next to the lighthouse is amazing, especially at sunset.

The good thing about our hostel was that you could bring your own alcohol, so we spent virtually nothing going out in the evenings! We carried on with our usual Goon drinking because it is so damn cheap! We found a new record low price for it in Byron Bay - $6 for 4l of wine (about 2.40 pounds!) A box will probably last 2 nights between 2 people, so thats 60p for a night out! I used to think 10 pounds spent down Wetherspoons on a Saturday night was a cheap night! I'm definitely going to setup www.goon.com when I get home and start importing the stuff!

The thing I loved about Byron Bay the most was the beach at sunset between 4:30 - 6pm when the horizon just goes completely orange (its great for photos as you can see - I was in heaven with my camera!) The whole bay looked so beautiful and idyllic with the sun disappearing behind the mountains. It was really nice just walking along the beach on my own as the whole place seemed so peaceful. The bay was probably one of my favourite views in Australia so far.

On our last day, we went on a bus trip to a place called Nimbin with 'Jims Alternative Tours' - alternative in that Nimbin is the marajuana capital of Australia and the police don't seem to care! Its still illegal, but the New South Wales police have told their men that they can intervene "if they want to"! Its a very hard idea to get your head around at first. Apparently the town was formed in the 70's when thousands of men fled to the hills so they didn't have to go to the Vietnam war! There was then this big music festival, which brought loads of hippies to the town, and then since then, its been inhabited by hippies and the police have turned a blind eye!

We were first taken to a Sunday market which had some really cool things (gorgeous fudge and bacon and egg rolls!) We then got back on the bus and its not often that you hear a bus driver say "right, lets go buy some pot"! Nimbin itself was a bit different to how I expected it to be, mainly in that I didn't see many hippies (they were probably all still stoned!) and the place was full of tourists. It was quite surreal to see a coach load of OAP's pull up in the marajuana capital of Australia I'll tell you! Apparently, every year the people of the town have a big mardi gras and march up the main highstreet to the police station with a giant spliff! Our driver started telling us stories about the people he'd had on his bus who'd taken weird stuff in Nimbin (mushrooms etc - which were in season apparently!) He lost one guy in the forest once and found him an hour later having a conversation with a bush! Another women locked herself on the bus and wouldn't let everyone else on because she thought they'd gone to get their weapons! Also, another guy smoked a joint over the police station fence when the bus was parked outside! The guy had some very funny stories! He took us on a very scenic drive, which had some great views. It was really fun on the bus because he played lots of appropriate hippy tunes all day, meaning that there was lots of stuff from the 70's I liked, such as The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd! At one point he took us really fast down this steep, twisty road to get to the bottom of the hill, and said that it synced up perfectly with a track from 'Dark Side of the Moon'! True to his word, the journey to the bottom took exactly the 5:12 minutes the song took to play out! It was a very appropriate song for what was very like a rollercoaster ride in parts! Apparently, one time one of the guys onboard who was out of it at the time, thought he'd missed the bus back and was actually on a rollercoaster ride! He then took us to this great lookout spot where the sheer drop to the bottom has almost convinced me not to do the big bungee jump in New Zealand! It was a very interesting day out though and definitely worth doing.

The same day we left Byron, we went to a surf camp as part of our OZ Experience pass. Once I got the hang of standing up, surfing was so much fun! The first time I stood up I was so proud and felt really cool. Then I looked behind me and the wave was about 2ft high so I felt a little less cool! It was very frustrating when you kept falling off because its so knackering getting back out to the waves and you get a nasty rash on your leg where you keep jumping back on the board! It was so much fun though so worth it! All the instructors were crazy Aussie surfer dudes and their job also happens to be the thing they love doing in their spare time! They literally surf all day every day! We had a little competition with some American guys trying to throw ping pong balls into cups of goon! If you got a ball in, the other team had to drink what was in that cup, until you'd got rid of all their cups! Unfortunately, England lost to the USA, but we took them into overtime and it was the best performance they'd seen from 1st timers to the game apparently! We also all went down to the beach for a small beach party late at night which was cool.

I think Byron Bay has been one of the best places I've stayed in Australia so far but I'm still not quite sure why! I think its just that everything is on one main highstreet thats leads straight to the beach, and the view from the beach and the lighthouse across the bay is so beautiful. Also, because most people stay here for quite a while, you get to know them quite well too and see familiar faces all the time which makes it easier to go out with a group of people and have a good time (because we spent most of our time going out with the Dutch girls that were staying in our dorm)

We're off to Sydney now, which is the place I've been looking forward to the most in Australia. I'm climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge when I get there with 2 girls from England we keep bumping into all the time from the OZ bus. We should be doing a trip to the Blue Mountains as well where I'm going to try and find the spot where The Darkness filmed the video to 'Love Is Only A Feeling' so I can be sad and air guitar along to it!

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