Welcome to New South Wales!

After 5 weeks in Australia, we really feel as if we have only really scratched the surface of this expansive country...but what a 5 weeks it has been indeed! We have topped it off with a scoot through New South Wales as we visited Byron Bay and Nimbin, took in some fresh (well, kind of) air in the Blue Mountains (where we took the photo above), stopped in to see our friends Hana and Lee in Kiama and finally finished off our visit with a couple of days soaking up the atmosphere in Sydney.

Byron Bay rocks!

For those of you who thought the hippy movement had long been extinguished, we can report that the embers of protest (and the occasional doobie) are still glowing brightly in the little towns of Nimbin, and to a slightly lesser extent, Byron Bay.

Byron Bay is nestled in a bay just beyond the grotesque high rises and neon lights of Surfer's Paradise, a town we felt compelled to drive through at pace. Ironically, Byron used to be best known for it's abbatoir, until, in the 1970's, it was adopted by hippies looking for an alternative lifestyle. And it's not surprising they chose this spot with it's beautiful beach and fantastic all year round surf. We stayed in, what has possibly been our best campsite yet - a park on the far end of the town, right on the beach...schweeeeeeeeet!

In summer the Bay is overrun by tourists from Sydney, but in winter, it is possible to get a feel for the surfer/hippy-ness which defines the town's reputation.

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Chilling out with the Couch Surfer

Not only did Byron Bay provide us with our best campsite, but we were totally stoked to discover Australia's coolest community (and volunteer) radio station - Bay FM 99.9 - and it's most excellent radio DJ - the Couch Surfer (The Wave Length: Monday (GMT+10) 20:00-22:00) who professes to "lay at full length on the couch while surfin music washes over us." Well, it most certainly sounds that way...and it's totally worth a listen.

The Couch Surfer treated us to some excellent tracks from local Byron Bay artists and a variety of funky tunes, including a 45 minute homage to Prince. Ha! Who would have thunk? But seriously, take a listen to "Seven" again and let us know if you don't think it's funky (and therefore don't have a funky bone in your body, you poor sad sack!)

He also played loads of surf tunes, including the heart wrenching "No Surf Blues" from the local surf band, Mal and the Longboarders. Unfortunately, we can't find a snippet of the track on the net, but the band has a website which plays snippets of some of the other tunes on their CDs. If this doesn't make you want to be a surfer, then we don't know what will (and you probably don't think "Seven" is funky either!!!).

The Wave Length is followed by the equally brilliant show "Mixing it Up" with the dj KB who plays a mixture of protest rock, local music and even some Psy-Trance (never heard that on the radio before!).

Bay FM is great! We don't think we've heard of another station that advertises ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle, has chakra healing give-aways and does the astronimical forecast after the weather report. Superb!

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Timewarped to the Summer of Love!

Despite popular opinion, Nimbin is a totally different experience to Byron. Our interest was piqued as we received both positive reports (colourful hippy town where the spirit of the revolution lives on) and negative opinion (drug infested Sodom and Gomorrah about to receive more policing to bring "things" under control). How could we not visit?

In truth, the town is a little of both, although it is doubtful that the 1200 residents would see the negative opinions as a problem. Every year Nimbin has a Mardi Gras where their fight for the legalisation of illicits takes a festival format with activities such as a Prohibition Protest Rally and Parade with the Ganja Faeries, the Nimbin Cannabis Cup, the Hemp Olympix, which includes the Bong "Throw'n'Yell", Joint Rolling, and the Grower's Iron Person event, where runners must first carry a 20kg sack of fertiliser, then a bucket of water, and finally "the crop", as a tribute to the difficulties faced by growers in the hills, and to show that cannabis users can be fit and healthy. At night, entertainment ranges from the Harvest Ball and Picker's Ball, rave doof parties, to poetry and jazz in local cafes. We didn't spend long there, but we did have one of the most surreal museum experiences (even more so than any Dali museums), as is demonstrated by the photo below - we found this quite funny!

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Spotted...and not spewed!

As usual, we were on the lookout for local wildlife, and were not disappointed when we took a boat trip out of Sydney harbour on a quest for Humpback whales. Unfortunately for about 20% of the passengers, the weather was not at all good, and pretty soon there were some green faces around us. Thankfully, we both had our sea legs and our sea worthiness was rewarded as we spotted two Humpbacks about 100 metres from the boat. They obliged us with some fin waves and tail flaps, and then to our suprise, three full breaches...awesome! Unfortunately, we were not rewarded with any good photos...every time we aimed the camera they hid, when we put it away, they pirouetted...just our luck! But we did get this little picture leaving Sydney on the boat (s'pose it'll have to do)

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Farewell Australia!

As we left Australia, we decided to do a quick catch up of some of the things we totally loved about the place, and some we're happy to see the back of:

What rocked:

*The BIG sky...day or night...it's humungous - we swear we saw every star in the universe!

*The crew and fellow passengers of Wings, the Whitsundays, and Whitehaven's uber-beeeeaaaaaaaaaaaacccccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhh!

*Vegemite...yum...and according to some, gourmet food!

*Byron Bay and BAY FM (see above)

*Good box red wine!!!!

*Cassowaries (even though we never spotted a wild one) and Platypus

*The trees on Fraser Island - very huggable!

*The Rocks, one of Sydney's oldest suburbs - full of character

*Aussie hippies and treebeards - interesting and a lot of fun

What sucked:

*Road signs! We got lost as places we were heading to suddenly disappeared off all the road signs - hugely frustrating!

*Our map book...didn't help

*Self-important caravan park receptionists mainly working at the Big 4 caravan parks

*Kangaroo/wallaby roadkill...there's so much of it, it's totally depressing at times...

*So-called Aussie "true blues" - really redneck, closed minded and generally quite destructive

*Sugar cane fields stretching from Brisbane up to the Daintree - sugar cane farms are responsible for the destruction of most of the rainforest all the way up the east coast - quite depressing too!

The Aussie rugby union press...hated them!

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