Exhausted and disheveled was how we arrived here. A night on the Grey­hound makes hos­tels into hotels! We were dropped off in town, des­pite request­ing a drop off closer to our new digs, our driver said “it was not pos­sible to stop near there”. So our heavily-laden walk down the beau­ti­ful, but long beach to Belongil Beac­h­ouse was not par­tic­u­larly wel­come. The hostel sign out­side was pleas­ing to my designer’s eye and James’ love of Hel­vetica. Our room was not ready so we stored our ruck­sacks and crashed out in the next door café over a capp. and flat white. I played with AV (aper­ture) and TV (shut­ter speed) to develop my depth-of-field tech­nique with James as my muse. Tired of sit­ting we ven­tured into town, a 20 minute walk and dis­covered Mokha a really lovely café that had free wire­less with your refresh­ments. The menu was eggs through and through, from omelette to scrambled and bey­ond, all deli­cious and with really good banana smooth­ies too.

We exper­i­enced a won­der­ful open-air mar­ket where the bohemian essence of Byron came alive. Hip­pies were every­where with Ozzies selling cloth­ing, dijeri­doos and drums etc, Afric­ans selling jew­ellery and Indi­ans doing henna tat­toos. The weather was not in our favour, but it was good to be there and see local Byron at play.

Sleep was call­ing loudly so we meandered back via the road (not a patch on the beach walk) and col­lapsed into our room. Belongil Beac­h­ouse was not the romantic beach oasis we ima­gined and our room was simply a let down. Mainly wooden pan­elled it was part clad with cork behind the bed, very strange. There was an extra single that served as a place for our belong­ings which was the best com­ment I can make really. The showers were pass­able though wait­ing out­side in the cold was not fun. So any­way, our first after­noon we crashed for a while out of neces­sity rather than any­thing else. There was live music play­ing at the res­taur­ant next door that was fine for a while, but the became extremely annoy­ing when try­ing to sleep. I escaped and went for a walk to the beach and arranged our WWOOF­ing on KI while J caught another half an hour. We freshened up, changed for din­ner and pac-safed as usual. Din­ner at the very same res­taur­ant next door, now without live music, was deli­cious, not too expens­ive and was washed down with an excel­lent bottle of cab-merlot enjoyed by us both. We relaxed and chat­ted, at ease with one another.

DAY TWO

Hav­ing at last dis­covered a wire­less café with good food, drinks and an atmo­sphere we were very loyal to them. So brunch was at Mokha where we sor­ted our live­a­board, Aus­tralia Zoo trans­fers and accom­mod­a­tion for the trip up the coast in to Queens­land. We decided a PADI refresher dive was a good plan hav­ing not been dive bud­dies for seven years and so nipped into Byron Bay Dive Centre and booked ourselves in for the next day which exten­ded our stay in Byron by an extra night. In the after­noon we bor­rowed the hos­tels boo­gie boards and headed out unguided into the pacific ocean and braved the winter seas. It was soon evid­ent that neither of us had mira­cu­lously dis­covered any knack for this since our hon­ey­moon. James had how­ever brought his water­proof cam­era and so recor­ded the watery bikini clad pro­ceed­ings. I proudly man­aged to catch one wave, but sadly J didn’t man­age to catch me on it or a wave him­self. We enjoyed being in the ocean though the cur­rent was strong, and I was some­what com­for­ted by the surfers bob­bing behind the waves fur­ther our to sea. Per­haps a les­son next time?

We chilled out in the even­ing over a deli­cious home cooked tikka mas­ala, thank you sweetie, and reviewed the boo­gie board­ing foot­age which I can only describe as like being in a wash­ing machine when sud­denly you glimpse a flash of bikini bot­toms between the waves! Con­sequen­tially I’ve reserved all my rights over the final cut of our Byron Bay movie! We fin­essed our Sydney har­bour movie and added new music to the opera house section.

DAY THREE

After a good break­fast of slow releas­ing carbs (yes, por­ridge again!) we did some more web-surfing, not the type of surf­ing expec­ted in Byron, but needs must. We were both look­ing for­ward to diving again, and J was par­tic­u­larly excited that the 40D would not be strapped to my face. A little nervously to be hon­est we ques­tioned ourselves on the ter­min­o­logy. BCD or BDC? “Just remem­ber, don’t get the o-ring wet” James perked up before we arrived at the dive centre for our refresher. The oblig­at­ory video was played which rather focused on pro­mo­tion and sales of SSI than impart­ing the inform­a­tion we required. There was one other diver, an Israeli dive mas­ter, that Rupert (our instructor) took under his wing. So with wet­suits on we waddled into the small pool for the prac­tical exer­cises. All our gear was pre­pared for us and I was per­son­ally I was glad we weren’t required to wrestle with Medusa on this occa­sion. My memory of diving was rusty, or so I thought, but this was easier than expec­ted to be honest.

So on went the weight belt (with buckle in the left hand), the BCD (with reg­u­lator and altern­ate air source on the right side and inflator and con­sole on the left). We checked everything; our air sup­ply was ON (with the con­sole point­ing down) and our reg­u­lat­ors and BCD was work­ing. We were ready. Our tests included mask clear­ing, reg­u­lator retrieval, buddy breath­ing, neut­ral buoy­ancy, easy. Rupert was happy with us all and so it was time for our dive at Julian Rocks, a small rocky island seen from Belongil beach. Our brief­ing mainly covered get­ting into the boat, use of the safety saus­age, man over-board pro­ced­ure and also the rules to be obeyed when diving with sharks! My atten­tion had now been diver­ted from the com­plex­it­ies of diving to avoid­ing the nat­ural path of the Grey Nurse shark! Well life is all about exper­i­ences so here goes.

We jumped into the 4x4 and onto a rib with some poke and soon we were there. Quickly gear­ing up we went off back­ward into the water, like lem­mings. Now refo­cused my full con­cen­tra­tion was on hav­ing a suc­cess­ful dive, with or without a shark encounter. So down we went. The vis­ib­il­ity was poor so no sharks were seen by us, but our dive was suc­cess­ful des­pite a strong cur­rent at the end. No mat­ter how hard you swam your pro­gress was at the dis­cre­tion of the water. Safely back on the rib to my sur­prise the Ger­man girls had seen a huge pod of Grey Nurse shark only meters away from us! I was filled with a great sense of relief and also dis­ap­point­ment that I didn’t real­ise this dream whilst diving under an instruct­ors care. Walk­ing back along the beach we were treated to the most spec­tac­u­lar sun­set which sig­ni­fied the end to a very happy day, and we shared our excite­ment about our com­ing Great Bar­rier Reef adven­ture. Din­ner was tikka mas­ala take2 and an early night before our next Grey­hound trip of 18 hours to Caloundra via Brisbane.

Byron Bay was great, par­tic­u­lar for me. I loved the relaxed hippy vibe, unpre­ten­tious air and sense that every­one was very com­fort­able with them­selves and con­ten­ted to be going about there busi­ness. The boutique shops were both inter­est­ing and eclectic and the ser­vice aptly friendly. The ever chan­ging col­ours of the expans­ive sky over Belongil beach was romantic and enti­cing and I would have liked to have stayed longer. I ques­tion how I would like it here in sum­mer with the inva­sion of tour­ist in every corner? This aside I could hap­pily revisit Byron in years to come. Being by the beach feels like com­ing home for me.

Cesca

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