Byron Bay
Pollution ahoy, maties!
July 1999

It's amazing how nothing happens for ages, and then everything happens at once, isn't it?

I'd been wanting to get out of Sydney and see some more of Australia for a while, but wasn't sure who, if anyone, would also be going up the coast.

Then all of a sudden, Mike and Kev decide they're going up the coast, Hami, Simon and Wanis (old friends from Scotland) decide to come to Australia and do some touring, and Lindsey (then returning home from Japan) mails me to let me know she'll be travelling through Oz too. Typical.

Anyway, I managed to catch up with Hami et al in Sydney, which was fun, but actually wound up travelling up the coast with Mike and Kev, largely due to their having a less constrained schedule.

I gave Wanis my mobile number though, so we could rendezvous in Byron when they arrived there.

The bus to Byron was a fairly uncomfortable overnight affair, arriving early in the morning with the three of us staggering blearily off with our luggage. As is the case with most of the popular tourist towns in Australia, the bus was met by representatives from the various hostels and backpackers vying for the custom of the latest batch of dishevelled travellers.

We briefly considered digging out the guide books and making a reason decision, but being lazy we simply choose the hostel with the cutest lass. It worked rather well, as they hostel was rather nice too...

Once we'd settled in we decided to check out the beach, which was a short walk over some train tracks behind the hostel. Though cloudy and a little windy, it was at least warmer than Sydney, so we headed east towards the town and the lighthouse on the peninsula, taking photos along the way.

On route to the lighthouse the beach at one point turns to boulders where a small hillock protrudes out into the sea, and running up the side of this was a raised wooden track. We decided to take a group shot against the sea, so I set the camera to timer and sat it on the railing. Our cool composure in the subsequent shot didn't last long however.

Just after the camera had operated the increasingly blustery wind caught the camera and slid it towards the edge of the rail causing me to dart forward and snatch it before it fell off and smashed. At least the shot came out okay!

Up on the lighthouse peninsula, the wind really picked up. We'd climbed up the path that ran along the seafront and at times were nearly blown off the ridge by the hammering wind coming off the ocean and over the hill. From this photo, taken at the base of the lighthouse, I get to see what I'd look like with a comb-over, should I ever go completely bald. I think I'll stick to having it cut short as I did when I returned to Sydney!

I should also point out that this is the most Easterly point of Australia. So far I haven't made it to the other extremes of the compass though...

Clambering back the way we had come, we took a detour onto the spit of land just to the north of the peninsula. In the rocky seafront curving between the two outcroppings of land, the sea roared and smashed around the boulders with tremendous force, churning the water (and sadly, the pollution) into masses of foam, little chunks of which would get caught by the wind and swept up and over the ridge.

Given that section along the coast is supposed to be popular for whale migration and mating, inevitably jokes about whale sperm kept being made as the off-white blobs scooted up and past us.

On the way home I got a call from Wanis on my mobile, saying they'd just got in from Coff's Harbour, so that night we met at the pub, and arranged to hire bikes the following day and explore the area...

On our second day in Byron, Mike, Kev and I borrowed bikes from the hostel and met Hami, Simon and Wanis who'd accrued bikes from their place to go for an explore. As far as I remember, I think the bikes were free, which was quite good, but pretty much that's where their redeemable qualities ended. They were built like mountain bikes, but had had the gears removed, leaving only a single gear that was too high to get up hills, and too low to get any speed on the flat. But then, they were free, so we couldn't really complain too much.

Anyway we initially headed up the road to the lighthouse, where thankfully it was slightly less windy than the day before, as you can see by the rather less dramatic group shots. From left we have Kev (not paying attention), Mike, Si, Hami and Wanis. I also took a series of photo's of the panorama from up by the lighthouse and which has been merged together here to show the entire view.

The differences in contrast made the process somewhat tricky but I've done my best. The beach you can see on the left of the shot looked interesting, and more importantly, fairly deserted so we decided to head there next.

We soon discovered why it was empty. We wandered along the beach after chaining the bikes up, and discovered more of the "whale sperm" foamy crud that we'd seen on the other side of the headland lying in large foul chunks along the entire shoreline. The wind would catch it and little lumps would break off and roll across the shallow slope of the beach. Dead fish and unidentifiable rotting marine matter cluttered the streams of liquid (the colour and stench prevents me from labelling it "water") which ran down into the brown and filthy waves.

After about half a mile or so we decided to turn back and find somewhere else to cycle to, but Hami's chain snapping as we went to leave called a halt to our plans. Mike, Kev and I continued to trundle about briefly but didn't really have the heart for it. Despite seeing the state of the water on our cycle ride, we actually booked and went on a surfing lesson the following day, fortunately on the more northern beach which was seemingly clean (or at least cleaner).

Despite looking at least partially competent in the photo's taken by the photographer, I actually only managed to stand on the board for about 3 seconds when I did manage to stand up. I could have pretended that I took to it like a duck to water, but in fairness to the reader I must confess I was pretty crap.

It was still excellent fun though, so much so that we decided to rent wetsuits and flippers and borrow a couple of the hostels boogie boards the following day. For those that don't know, a boogie board is like a large version of those polystyrene boards that wheezy fat kids have to learn to swim with at school. To quote Eddie Izzard, sort of an Aqua-Zimmerframe.

I can be seen below standing on one of them in our room in the hostel. For obvious reasons I didn't take the actual camera down to the beach and the surf! Anyway the theory is you paddle out through the waves with the board mostly in front of you until you get to where you want to try to catch a wave. With frantic paddling back towards the shore as the wave approaches, you then pull yourself further up the board and hope it picks you up and sweeps you back to the beach.

Most of the time you wind up getting knocked over and smashed about instead though, which can be pretty scary at times. And pretty painful. When we finally hauled ourselves out of the surf and removed the rough rubber flippers we'd been wearing, both Mike and I realised that the action of wiggling around in side the flippers had ripped chunks of skin off our toes, leaving them bleeding and raw.

The pair of us gingerly walked home and decided that a few days of recuperation were in order as soon as we arrived in Airlie Beach, which is where we left for the following day.

© Barny Russell 2005