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Our first challenge was finding the hostel. We were staying at the somewhat legendary Arts Factory, but its a bit out of the way on the fringe of town and without the Lonely Planet we weren't entirely sure where it was. A trip to the tourist centre provided us with a map and we were able to locate it, btu a rather inconvenient railway track seemed to run right through the centre of town meaning we would have to walk all the way to the bottom of the street cross over at a bridge and then walk all the way back up past where we were already standing on the other side to get to the hostel. Convinced there must be abother way across the railway track I asked a guy from one of the other hostels and he told us there was a crossing just a little further up, however, it wasn't particularly obvious and Lucy started getting pissed of by the fact we weren't given specific enough directions so we went about the long walk along the route we knew would take us to the hostel (in the baking sun!). 40 minutes later we arrived and then collapsed into our dorm room.
Dragging our asses out of the room, I indulged in a pineapple (and various other things) smoothie and lounged by the side of the pool (yes! there was a pool) whilst Lucy went for a bit of a swim. We booked our trip to Nimbin for the next day and I got myself a thai curry from the cafe for a bargainous $6 before we returned to the dorm around 6pm and chatted with the guys in our dorm room before one of them dragged out their laptop and put on The Black Knight (awesome film obviously) until I fell asleep sometime shortly thereafter - what?? I hadn't slept on the bus!!
The next morning we left for Nimbin at 10:20am on Jim's Alternative Tours Bus, driven by Jim himself, who told us soo many stories on the journey in you could barely believe half of them. Stories of a stag trip for a policeman and all his police man mates who tied him to a tree on the way back, naked, and left him there the whole night. Of a girl that became so paranoid that when they stopped for munchies she was so determined that everyone was going to get weapons to kill her with that she somehow locked the bus with everyone outside of it and no one could get it open. Their attempts at trying to get her to open the bus was put down to trickery at gettin their concealed knives to her throat.so they had to wait for her to come to her senses and unlock it. Of the girl that came running up to Jim exasperated, looking deeply concerned and told Jim that she just HAD to drive the bus. It had us all in stiches the whole ride in.
We stopped off briefly at a local pub to stock up on some beer to get us all in the mood, combined with some very well chosen music, and were encouraged to try the local delacy of macadamian nuts, cracking them open with large nut crackers built into the table tops. Then it was back onto the bus for the last stretch into Nimbin.
Quite the oddity, Nimbin is the most liberal hippy town you will ever step into. Up until 1973 Nimbin was a small quiet dairy town in the middle of no where, when the Aquarius Festival, a "counter-cultural arts and music festival" organised by the Australian Union of Students was held in the town. The ten day event aimed to celebrate alternative thinking and sustainable lifestyles, essentailly Australia's Woodstock, and following its conclusion many participants and festival goers remained to set up communes in the area. Today it is known, and popular, for its "cannabis culture."
So getting off the bus we started our trip by visiting the Nimbin Museum, which gave a nice history to the town, the people, the hippy culture and those that generally stood in its way ie the American Government and corporations. On our way out we bought some cookies from some random woman who either spoke bad english or had simply forgotten how to speak through continuous use of weed. We met a couple of cool girls from Canada and some of the other people that had been on our bus and went to the park where some hippies were playing a variety of instruments (not particularly well I might add) and enjoyed our cookies and passed around a couple of spliffs that the girls had purchased.
We then had a wander around town before getting back onto the bus and waiting for the stuff to hit us. And we waited. And we waited, And then we felt something, something small .. and then it passed. And Lucy and I both concluded that weed like I had always said it did, didn't do anything for us, whilst the same stuff had the girls rather f***ed.
Our pit stop on the way back to Bryon Bay was a trip to Hippy Paul Recher and his "hippy heaven," which was pretty entertaining. And we tried a serious of fruits that he grew on site that were unusual and tasty and were shown flowers that if you were stupid enough to consider smoking would kill you near instantly they're so strong (see Nimbin photos). On an unimpressive note I picked up a leach which I failed to notice until i was trailed in blood, more to the point the leach was gone at this point so I must have brushed him off at some point, but not before being bitten and anistheatised.
Back at the hostel we were pumped and up for clubbing so we went out with Phil (the Swiss boy) out to the hostel bar, the Buddah Bar first, before getting the free minibus into town to Cheeky Monkeys, a backpacking institution, of cheap drinks, large dancefloor, and drunken backpackers. We had a damn good time, the music was good, the drinks kept flowing. It was a good night.
The next morning, being the morning after the night before, and me having the worst hangovers god could ever bestow upon a single individual felt horrendous and wanted to curl into a corner and slowly die. I slept through the cool guys in our rooms departure and Lucy was introducing herself to the new comers when it suddenly dawned on me (and converselt herself simultaneously) that it was Caz (Ellerker)!! (And her boyfriend Dan and friend Sam) What were the odds! Of all the dorm rooms in all the hostels in all the world! We had a good chat, I filled her in on some Newcastle gossip (although some of it quite old now) and on Pete and Caroline (Clare) and the Newcastle Union peeps.
They then all left for lunch and a walk about the beach, which Lucy and I decided sounded like a good idea (minus the heading out for lunch bit, we raided our supermarket supplies instead) and headed along down the beach and walked to the most Easternly point of Australia. It then began raining tho so this activity was abandonned thankfully timed near the end anyway and attempted to seek shelter from the rain before concluding it was gonna go on forever and that we'd just have to get wet and walked (swiftly) back to the hostel in the rain. We hit the Buddah Bar for food, which was very tasty, even if we did have to scrabble about for seats (ridiculously) and then met back up with Caz and the boys in the dorm room and got ready for a night out.
Having hit Cheeky Monkeys the previous evening we decided to go to Cocamongas, the other club recommended in the Lonely Planet and many a backpacker. Well I don't know who recommends the place, but it was a bit s***. It was firstly hard to get into, the security was beyond ridiculous, because not only were they checking your ID, but scanning and retaining a copy of it and then taking your photo. Australian Immigration was barely this extensive. And once we were in the place was small, expensive and whilst the music was alright the atmosphere was definately lacking. It didn't help that Caz's friend Sam was also being a bit of a downer on the entire evening, being unecessarily depressive on everything (he would later be set loose on his on by Caz in their travels). After giving Coca a solid chance we abandonned it and headed for Cheeky Monekys, which was significantly better and as debaucherious and full of drunken backpackers as the night before. It was good craic and after a good amount of dancing we called it a night and headed to the minibus pick up via the 23 hour pie shop (I love that it is only closed one hour in the day) and hit the hay.
The next morning was miserable and so we spent it in the hostel reading and then went across to the hostel cinema (yes the hostel has its own cinema and not like a movie room an actual cinema!) and watched a recently released Swedish film called "Let the Right One In" thats a romance between a cute blond haired bullied 12 year old boy and a vampire girl and the story of their pre-adolescent romance. It was actually really good, even if I'm not a fan of reading subtitles. And the ending was actually a bit funny when the girl saves Oskar, the boy, killing just about everyone in the process.
We went to African restaurant that Caz and Co had found the day before for dinner, which was also BYOB which was good and had cous cous and some delicious chicken thing that I couldn't even begin to describe. It was small, but very cosy, and the food was outstanding. Should anyone ever find themselves in Byron its just passed Woolworths and before the Casino, part of a small retail park. Its the best think you'll eat that week - guaranteed. And when we returned to the hostel, the rain finally having abated we went for a small twilight swim before once again retiring to bed and packing our bags ready for our early start the next day.
Up at 8:30am we checked out and were picked up by our surfing instructor at 9am. Theres not much I can say for the whole surfing experience other than that it is soo ridiculously hard and tiring. Even getting out into the waves is hard with the current of the waves trying to drive you back to the coast every time, frequently being pushed back and smacking you on the back of your legs. And then when you give it a go its over so quickly. When we started there was a lot of falling over. Lucy picked it up far more quickly than I did, and when the instructor decided to let me try do it my own way as opposed to his own method he had been teaching I got up on the first time. Whilst he is clearly a very gifted surfer himself I'm not sure if teaching is his thing. He doesn't seem particularly observant about those around him. I almost broke his nose when he ignored me screaming at him that a wave was about to smack my surf board he was trying to get out of my hands against his own safety rule (fool!). By the end of the lesson tho we were both able to stand on the boards and take it from the sea back to the sand, which was cool. I have never been so tired after anything in my life tho and so was rather dismayed to find that my jeans had vanished off the face of the earth.
The instructor suggested that I must have left it outside and then had it stolen - this made little sense since the rest of my clothing was here, why would I pick up everything but my jeans? And was also complete b******s considering I had taken out my passport (thank f***) and other valuables out of my pockets and put it into a lock box in the van, why would I then take the jeans and throw them out of the van? I don't know what happened to them, but I certainly did not leave them outside.
After returning to the hostel and making lunch we went down to catch the courtesy bus into town to catch our coach to find that it had decided to leave early. Why wouldn't it? But we were assured that when it returned we'd be able to convince the driver to take us into town quickly. After waiting 20 minutes tho and getting close to our departure time we were gettin anxious and decided to double check. The previous receptionist had disappeared and this one told us we didn't have a chance of getting the courtesy bus and were waiting about for no reason - rude b****.
We quickly scrabbled our backpacks on and began the walk to the coach (the journey that had taken us just under 40 minutes in reverse and with only 20 minutes til our departure. And so we were flying down the road, hoping the shortcut we now knew (the one we had been looking for on the first day) would cut 20 minutes from the walk...
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