Travels around the world – Byron Bay and travelling North

Somehow it was decided that the journey back to Brisbane would be made with Gillian and Kim.  Gillian had gone from Brisbane to Sydney and Kim had flown from the UK to Sydney. As none of us had seen anything between the 2 cities we realised there was plenty so see decided that we could take a couple of weeks to travel north.  That was the plan but things don’t always work out the way you expect.

The planned journey was to take us through Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay, Nimbin and Surfers Paradise and then into Brisbane itself.

All was going according to plan and by the time we got to Byron Bay we had grown in number to 5.  We managed to get to the lighthouse at the most eastern point of Australia, it was a good photo opportunity but the views from there are quite spectacular as well as it overlooks some incredible beaches.

On one of the Evenings in Byron Bay I decided to call my mates in Brisbane to make sure they had remembered that I was going to be there in about a week.  It turns out that I was wrong; I was going to be there a bit quicker as one of my mates was on his way from the UK to Brisbane!! 

As soon as I heard that Adam was coming over I arranged to travel to Brisbane the very next morning.  This means that I missed the Surfers paradise and Nimbin parts of the journey.  Nimbin is a bit of a hippy colony and I wasn’t too bothered about missing it but Surfers is always a place I intended to visit.  Not for the surfing, but because it was supposed to be a party city.  We had decided not to stop off on the way to Sydney and I’d been too hung-over to take the day trip when Kev and Ian had been so I was hoping that third time lucky was going to come into play.  Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that it was never meant to be.  These thoughts went through my head as the coach made its extended stop at the Surfers paradise coach station but I managed to resist the temptation and continued my trip to Brisbane.

When I got to the Hostel I found everyone on the balcony outside the rooms, they were expecting me and had got a slab of beers in.  The next morning Ian and I took a taxi to the airport and collected Adam, we watched him take the walk across the tarmac into the airport building in his jeans and long shirt and chuckled to ourselves.  It was quite early in the morning but we’d still had the foresight to wear our shorts.  It gets hot in Queensland during the summer months….