Hi all,

Today is our last day in Byron and our first sign of drizzle!

For our 1st night and 2nd night we stayed with the people of the Oz experience bus (few Germans and English) and we went to this backpacker bar called Cheeky Monkeys. The bar is opposite our hostel and our hostel has an affiliation so we get free food and some drinks. The bar does loads of random competitions and gives away loads of prizes early on in the night to encourage you to stay. I almost won a skydive in a heads and tails competition although im pretty sure quite a few of the other contestants cheated!! The place plays a real mix of music and we ended up staying there from 7.30 till around 2.30.

We got up the next day and the weather was really nice so we went to the main beach which was really pretty and quite busy. In the evening we went to this bar called the rails which is famous in Byron cause it has live music every night and really good food. (It's where all the locals hang out) and then we went to this weird cinema. All the seats are fully reclining and covered in cow print and the lighting is really odd. We watched Knocked Up which I thought was really funny, but Emily fell asleep (only4a little bit). The next day we checked out and went on a day trip to Nimbin. It is up in the Hinterland and is a hippy comune. It used to be a cattle farming community up until the 1960s and then the laws changed and the dairy farmers could support themselves anymore. in the 1970s hippys came from across Oz to celebrate the age of aquarius, bought loads of land really cheap and stayed there since. It is worth a visit but you have to be a little careful of what you eat!! On the journey up there we went through the National Park and saw a 100m waterfall and this huge lizard. (oh btw on the bus to surfcamp we saw wild kangaroos and at the camp fire this possum kept running around our feet - and we saw a snake at the hostel)

On Monday we moved to another hostel which we got free as part of our package with travel bugs. It is soooooooo nice and has a pool and loads of free pancakes for breakfast. On Monday night they have a free BBQ and games which was a good laugh. We had an early night however as we got up really early to see the sunrise over the most easterly point in Australia. This was organised by our hostel and the guy showed us a humpback whale from the light house and we could see this pod of dolphins playing in the surf. It was awesome. In the afternoon we got the bikes from our hostel and cycled back up the hill to Watergo beach which is really tranquil. The cycle was really hard work because the bikes were about 5 sizes too small so our knees were knocking our chins and we actually couldn't get ANY speed at all even on the flat, let alone the MASSIVE cliff we had to cycle up! PLUS we had to wear these horrible helmets - which wouldn't have made any difference if we fell off because they were made out of foam!?!? As you can imagine - there is no photographic evidence of this thank god. Anyway, so after enjoying the beach we eventually cycled back to our hostel, cooked dinner and then went out into town. We went to Cocomangas and Cheeky monkeys (again). There were loads of English people out and we had really good time. Checked out this morning and our just on our way to Brisbane.

Miss you all loads Katy and Emily xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx