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We arrived at Byron Bay at 20:00 Oz time with no accomodation booked assuming there would atleast be a bed or two somewhere for us. But after two hours of calling every hostel in the area we realised that we should probably never assume again as there were no beds available anywhere! We waited at the hostel bus pick up point asking the drivers if they could find us anywhere to kip - and by this time we were quite willing to sleep on the beach or in a public toilet! Fortunately on attempt number four one of the drivers took pity on us and gave us the communual TV room floor - the smell was manageable but people climbing over you in the early hours became quite tedious!
Actually wanting to get out of bed for once we awoke early to check in to our new residence at The Arts Factory. The gaff had a real hippy vibe with lots of different types of rooms including teepees, an old double decker bus, cubes and a battered caravan (bloody gypos get everywhere!). The whole place had a really chilled out atmoshpere which suited our new laid back, new aged traveller stylee we now have.
Our first relaxing day consisted of checking out the sights of Byron and what it had to offer. The evening was once again spent sinking The Goon in the communual drinking area where we met Adam and Laura and later on bumping into Harry and Lisa who we had crossed paths with further up the coast on our travels. We all went out to probably one of the cheesiest clubs along the east coast called Cheeky Monkeys where dancing on the tables is permitted and prancing around like a tw*t is obligatory!
The next day we hopped on a tour bus to a little town an hour out of Byron called Nimbin where marajuana is grown and smoked freely with little or no intrusion from the old bill as opposed to the rest of Oz where its deemed highly illegal. The tour was guided by a real life hippy who enjoyed over using the terms "its a beautiful thing" and "it puts a smile on your dial"! As you can imagine the day was a blur but one thing we wont forget is visiting a beautiful hippy retreat in the middle of a dense sub tropical rain forest that one hippy has planted himself over twenty nine years - god knows how when in his hand he had one of the biggest joints you will ever see, it was the size of a traffic cone we kid you not! That evening we bumped into Liza and Jims who we dorm shared with in Surfers and we spent the evening catching up, playing drinking games and amazing them with our card magic.
On our final day in Byron we thought we may have enough fuel left in our tanks to take a walk to the most easterly point in Australia (the Byron Bay lighthouse). However, our thoughts must have been clouded by the excessive Goon intake the night previous because as we slowly walked the route towards the lighthouse our legs began to feel jellified and catching our breath started to become difficult - nearly three months of alcohol, crap food and no exercise is obviously starting to take its toll! Not being half way there we decided to about face and return to the beach in favour of sun bathing and relaxing - lazy gits! We heard from a reliable source that our long lost buddy Loz was heading into Byron from Surfers especially for his birthday. Whilst sitting in a bar that very evening a bright orange glow captured our attention from afar and to our delight young Loz appeared - just in time to begin his b'day celebrations with us! Not surprisingly we spent our evening at Cheekys where we wowed the crowd with our fully sycronized and in time dancing rendition of Michael Jacksons "Dont Blame It On The Sunshine"! We must have looked so cool but being Gooned up we didnt care!
The next morning we were due to depart Byron at 8:00am but because of the enourmously heavy night before we missed both our alarms going off and came to at 7:55am and considering the bus station was 20 mins away we had no hope in hell of making it so went back to sleep! It turned out later that thankfully we did miss it as Loz somehow did make it but after half hour of travelling projectile vomitted all over the bus!
The story about Loz really put "a smile on our dials" and the Byron experience was "a beautiful thing". Sydney here we come........if we dont miss the bus again!!   Â
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