After our sojourn in Sydney we headed to Byron Bay. A beautiful town on the east coast. Essentially a holiday destination for Sydney and Brisbanites. Overpriced food but a very laidback atmosphere. Most of it was spent on the beach accept for two days, one of which was spent diving, which was fantastic, probably one of the best dives I’ve ever done, on the second dive I went down with Georgie as her buddy. We went out to Julian Rocks about 2.5k off the eastern tip of Australia. Due to the ocean currents which pass by its a haven for sea life. We saw giant turtles, nurse sharks, another shark with a funny name and loads of inquisitive fish.
The only other day of note was a day tour around the local area called The Local Knowledge Tour. There were quite a few tours to choose from, most of them revolved around a trip to Nimbin, and with it being an ex- hippy community we all know the kind of trip that would involve.
The Local Knowledge Tour offered more than that. Including Tea Tree oil lakes, aboriginal history, waterfalls, local flora and fauna, knowledge and of course Nimbin. It was a difficult choice, spending a day with stoned teenagers or finding out about the local area.
So a little after nine we were picked outside our apartment ( the pick up was for nine the lateness was our fault entirely) and after picking all the other people up we were soon on our way to Lake Ainscough. Anthony, our guide was chatty, possibly over chatty, you could even say he was quite in love with his own voice. However we realised very quickly that he did have very good local knowledge. Lake Ainscough was the first stop, a lake near the sea which was tea coloured, due to all the tannins which leach into it from the surrounding tea tree oil trees. Tony told us about how the lake was split up into differing portions,men’s and women’s sides, by the Aboriginals. Just around the corner there was an Aboriginal spiritual place which our guide told us about. In Fact he only told us about the childrens stories because the area we were in was designated as a man’s place and there were women and uninitiated men( if we wanted to become initiated it would involve circumcision, obviously we declined) present. Throughout the day he told us other snippets of Aboriginal folklore and dreamtime stories but I wouldn’t want to ruin his tour by retelling them here, in fact the aboriginals don’t like the easy retelling of stories as they believe the answer should be searched for and not given up to easily.
Next was boomerang throwing. whilst teaching us how to throw the boomerang he also told us the history and cultural significance of it. I didn’t realise how many different types of boomerang there were and that they did different jobs, some are designed to take down Kangeroos and others (the one we were learning with) were for killing birds. It was all fastinating, It turned out that even though I was a “lefty” I managed to throw the boomerang the best!
-
- 20100124boomerang15
-
- 20100124boomerang18
-
- 20100124boomerang20
-
- 20100124boomerang21
Pride always comes before a fall ( I guess it must be because its a man thing).
We visited various waterfalls during the day. From very high ones(104m) to smaller swimming holes. At one we were encouraged to join the locals in jumping off them. Well although I did jump off a couple of times I bricked it whilst other members of the group flung themselves with complete disregard to any health and safety directives, there wasn’t a hard hat or steel toed boot in sight!
-
- 20100125waterfalljumping01
-
- 20100125waterfalljumping02
