30th birthday part 3: COFFS HARBOUR to BYRON BAY
Thu, Sep. 17th, 2015 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annarti
It's cold and wintry and I'm writing up Byron Bay, that'd be right =( Okay so technically it's Ballina to Byron, but the photos finished yesterday at Coffs, and Ballina was just convenient. We also got chocolate there. They had a shop that basically just chocolate coated everything. Various fruits and nuts, coffee beans, candied ginger, you name it. If it was good with chocolate they coated it. We got a large coffee cup full of them and it was goooood 8D Also by this point we were in skirts and sleeveless tops. It was, like, 27 in Byron. Frigging beautiful.
Yesterday we had hail the size of small marbles and the ground was white with it. Take me back to Byron D:
So yeah. Ballina to Byron. CLEARLY NOT A GREAT STRETCH THEN. And then Brisbane was only another 2-ish hours on the next day, so MUCH more sightseeing up this way. I could've stayed a week in Byron. It was gorgeous. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We did a fair bit before we got to the actual town of Byron Bay.
First stop was a hedge maze! Just out of Ballina is the Thursday Plantation, where they make tea tree oil, and hence a maze made of tea trees. It was only about chest-height so we could see out of it, and enough spiders and cobwebs that I in my Hillsian capacity shooed off for Cassie, but we did see this butterfly! It was that kind of iridescent BRIGHT turquoise that you can't capture on camera, and it sat there very obligingly for me to photograph it =3
The maze also had some funky topiary work, such as this awesome dragon. LOOK it even has teeth :D
Cassie: ... Are those... boobs?
Me: ... Yes. Those are boobs. That is a boob pole.
So then we left Ballina and its boob poles and headed north. Despite having followed the Pacific Highway for about 700km by this point, we hadn't actually seen the Pacific, so when we got to a spot on the road that pointed to a lookout I decided we had to go and look at it. So there you go! The little town of Lennox Head, somewhere between Ballina and Byron Bay.
Zooming in on that head in the middle of the photo above. I didn't realise it at the time--I was just playing with my zoom--but I dare say that's the lighthouse at Byron Bay, making that head there the most easterly point in Australia.
More of Lennox Head.
And back the other way. I don't want to say that's Ballina because I'm probably wrong.
Waves crashing on rocks <3
On the way to our next destination, which was along another road that made us go WOW a lot. Google took us on this road. It was not only unbitumised, but it was HEAVILY potholed in such a way that you could not avoid the potholes. We spent the whole time going, 'GOOGLLLLLEEEEE WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US DDDD:' and apologising to the poor little Getz. Tiny city car was not made for this level of off-roading! When we got to the other end of it, where it turned into bitumen again, there was another little city car stopped just before getting on it, with the occupants looking down like they were also wondering where the hell Google was taking them.
Made for some nice views, though. It's so GREEN.
So the mystical place Google was taking us to was the Crystal Castle, up in the northern NSW Hinterland. It's a beautiful, peaceful gardens with giant crystals of rose quartz and geodes 3m tall, a bamboo forest and statues of various Asian deities. Byron Bay is famous for three things--hippies, hipsters and summer music festivals which generally combine the two. In the absence of summer (...I know, right?) we were in it for the first two, so here's the Crystal Castle representing the hippies. Here's some sort of trumpet looking flower.
One of the said statues, this one of Avalokiteshvara. I had to look that up.
She was very pretty with all the branches of that tree up behind her.
Details. People were encouraged to leave coins on the statues to... idk something to do with gods, but the money all got donated to something or other. Way more currencies than just Australian, too. Not sure how they go about donating them.
One of the crystal boulders--this one is sodalite--Garuda's feathery butt and the start of the bamboo forest.
Ferns and bamboo! It was so peaceful and relaxing here <3
Vishnu('s leg) riding Garuda into the bamboo forest.
The sodalite boulder. There were also plenty of various quartz boulders, mostly rose, some carved into table and chairs they were that big.
Bamboo forest! It was so pretty <3 <3 My favourite spot, I think.
The lower reaches of every. single. stalk. was covered in people carving their names and hearts into the bamboo. I'm still not sure if I'm offended or touched.
Cassie taking a photo of Garuda and Vishnu.
Shinto gate! I know I said skirt, and I COULD have been, but I still wasn't used to the fact that I could do this in frigging winter. So, jeans. Still open shoes and no sleeves. The skirt I would break out that evening.
Buddha on lotus with another bamboo forest. The rocks leading up to him are all rose quartz.
The hero shot.
Beautiful soft carving <3
Ganesh and just two of the biggest geodes you've ever seen. There were, like, a dozen pairs of them all over the place acting as gates. So beautiful.
Feeling very zen after our walk through the Hinterland with crystals and Asian deities, and also having driven 700-frigging-kilometres, we decided we needed a massage and figured Byron would be the perfect place for such a thing. Because again, hipsters and hippies. We didn't end up getting the massage, but we did find a day spa in Mullumbimby, on the way from the Crystal Castle into Byron, cos the day was getting on and damnit we wanted our spa. Also Mullumbimby is just way too much fun to say. Hee. Mullumbimby.
From a really nondescript street entrance--it was basically a back alley filled with the service entrance to electriconics shops and hardware stores--the inside was GORGEOUS. Dark wooden-built place with ferns and palms flopping over everything. No photos because we left such things away from all the water, but the website has enough to get the idea. We just melted in there for an hour continuing with our feeling of hip and groovy zen, briefly tested the sauna and spent just enough time in the steam room to decide that we couldn't breathe and left that.
BYRON BAY <3 <3 <3 We got in just as the sun was setting, dumped our stuff at the motel (which was a good $30 more than we'd been spending, because Byron, but it was also $30 better than where we'd been staying so that was fine), changed into something more Byron-appropriate and hippy, then wandered out onto the main drag. It was just so PRETTY. Buskers along the street, and all of them really good, every second shop a hip and groovy café or restaurant so there were HEAPS to pick from, everyone really relaxed and happy, absolutely balmy temperature... Also they don't just have surf shops, like we do in Adelaide, they have specific brand surf shops. As in, this shop ONLY sells Billabong. This one ONLY sells Rip Curl. So anyway. Finally we decided on this place, Byron Fresh Café, because they had some lovely live music going on out the front and it looked like a pretty amazing menu. I took this same photo (mostly) and put it on Instagram and the thing got 13 likes in the hour.
So Byron with the denim jacket and floaty green skirt and necklace made out of shells and peacock earrings.
Because I haven't had a foodie photo in a while X3 My salmon and Cassie's pulled pork. They were AMAZING.
Byron Fucking Bay, man. So the next morning we met up with one of Cassie's friends who had just recently moved from Perth to Byron, and she took us to this café well off the main drag that we never would have found if not for local knowledge. Poached eggs with asparagus and truffle sauce with that view for breakfast? Yes plz gimme more. I'm convinced that if an eatery in Byron isn't at least great it won't survive the month. We never had anything there that wasn't incredible.
Breakfast view!
Other side of breakfast view!
After breakfast we headed up another windy--but bitumised!--road to the lighthouse I mentioned earlier. This is the view from the car park back to Byron.
Steep, steep cliffs and awesome crashing waves at the foot.
Looking back up to the lighthouse with a beautiful Cassie on the right =3
THAT'S A WHALE. It just dove down again as we looked at it and, knowing the buggers can stay under for, like, half an hour, we gave up waiting for it to resurface. So that's my whale photo.
I love this shot. Cassie and her friend whose name I've terribly forgotten because I suck with names. But she was awesome. I would like to meet her again.
And that there is the most easterly point on mainland Australia :D You could walk down to it but we opted not to. God that sea looks so inviting, though.
SKIRTS. And my cheap-arse sunnies I had to buy back in Coffs because I didn't realise how sunny it was going to be. And my cheap-arse new shoes I had to buy in Sydney because the pair I'd been wearing at the time broke. YEAH. I got very, very mildly sunburnt that day. The sort of sunburn you wouldn't notice if there weren't lines to go with it, and it'd faded by about lunch time the next day, but still. Sunburn in August, yep.
What a fitting end to Byron Bay :D Tomorrow, Brisbane right back down to Sydney.
Yesterday we had hail the size of small marbles and the ground was white with it. Take me back to Byron D:
So yeah. Ballina to Byron. CLEARLY NOT A GREAT STRETCH THEN. And then Brisbane was only another 2-ish hours on the next day, so MUCH more sightseeing up this way. I could've stayed a week in Byron. It was gorgeous. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We did a fair bit before we got to the actual town of Byron Bay.
First stop was a hedge maze! Just out of Ballina is the Thursday Plantation, where they make tea tree oil, and hence a maze made of tea trees. It was only about chest-height so we could see out of it, and enough spiders and cobwebs that I in my Hillsian capacity shooed off for Cassie, but we did see this butterfly! It was that kind of iridescent BRIGHT turquoise that you can't capture on camera, and it sat there very obligingly for me to photograph it =3
The maze also had some funky topiary work, such as this awesome dragon. LOOK it even has teeth :D
Cassie: ... Are those... boobs?
Me: ... Yes. Those are boobs. That is a boob pole.
So then we left Ballina and its boob poles and headed north. Despite having followed the Pacific Highway for about 700km by this point, we hadn't actually seen the Pacific, so when we got to a spot on the road that pointed to a lookout I decided we had to go and look at it. So there you go! The little town of Lennox Head, somewhere between Ballina and Byron Bay.
Zooming in on that head in the middle of the photo above. I didn't realise it at the time--I was just playing with my zoom--but I dare say that's the lighthouse at Byron Bay, making that head there the most easterly point in Australia.
More of Lennox Head.
And back the other way. I don't want to say that's Ballina because I'm probably wrong.
Waves crashing on rocks <3
On the way to our next destination, which was along another road that made us go WOW a lot. Google took us on this road. It was not only unbitumised, but it was HEAVILY potholed in such a way that you could not avoid the potholes. We spent the whole time going, 'GOOGLLLLLEEEEE WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US DDDD:' and apologising to the poor little Getz. Tiny city car was not made for this level of off-roading! When we got to the other end of it, where it turned into bitumen again, there was another little city car stopped just before getting on it, with the occupants looking down like they were also wondering where the hell Google was taking them.
Made for some nice views, though. It's so GREEN.
So the mystical place Google was taking us to was the Crystal Castle, up in the northern NSW Hinterland. It's a beautiful, peaceful gardens with giant crystals of rose quartz and geodes 3m tall, a bamboo forest and statues of various Asian deities. Byron Bay is famous for three things--hippies, hipsters and summer music festivals which generally combine the two. In the absence of summer (...I know, right?) we were in it for the first two, so here's the Crystal Castle representing the hippies. Here's some sort of trumpet looking flower.
One of the said statues, this one of Avalokiteshvara. I had to look that up.
She was very pretty with all the branches of that tree up behind her.
Details. People were encouraged to leave coins on the statues to... idk something to do with gods, but the money all got donated to something or other. Way more currencies than just Australian, too. Not sure how they go about donating them.
One of the crystal boulders--this one is sodalite--Garuda's feathery butt and the start of the bamboo forest.
Ferns and bamboo! It was so peaceful and relaxing here <3
Vishnu('s leg) riding Garuda into the bamboo forest.
The sodalite boulder. There were also plenty of various quartz boulders, mostly rose, some carved into table and chairs they were that big.
Bamboo forest! It was so pretty <3 <3 My favourite spot, I think.
The lower reaches of every. single. stalk. was covered in people carving their names and hearts into the bamboo. I'm still not sure if I'm offended or touched.
Cassie taking a photo of Garuda and Vishnu.
Shinto gate! I know I said skirt, and I COULD have been, but I still wasn't used to the fact that I could do this in frigging winter. So, jeans. Still open shoes and no sleeves. The skirt I would break out that evening.
Buddha on lotus with another bamboo forest. The rocks leading up to him are all rose quartz.
The hero shot.
Beautiful soft carving <3
Ganesh and just two of the biggest geodes you've ever seen. There were, like, a dozen pairs of them all over the place acting as gates. So beautiful.
Feeling very zen after our walk through the Hinterland with crystals and Asian deities, and also having driven 700-frigging-kilometres, we decided we needed a massage and figured Byron would be the perfect place for such a thing. Because again, hipsters and hippies. We didn't end up getting the massage, but we did find a day spa in Mullumbimby, on the way from the Crystal Castle into Byron, cos the day was getting on and damnit we wanted our spa. Also Mullumbimby is just way too much fun to say. Hee. Mullumbimby.
From a really nondescript street entrance--it was basically a back alley filled with the service entrance to electriconics shops and hardware stores--the inside was GORGEOUS. Dark wooden-built place with ferns and palms flopping over everything. No photos because we left such things away from all the water, but the website has enough to get the idea. We just melted in there for an hour continuing with our feeling of hip and groovy zen, briefly tested the sauna and spent just enough time in the steam room to decide that we couldn't breathe and left that.
BYRON BAY <3 <3 <3 We got in just as the sun was setting, dumped our stuff at the motel (which was a good $30 more than we'd been spending, because Byron, but it was also $30 better than where we'd been staying so that was fine), changed into something more Byron-appropriate and hippy, then wandered out onto the main drag. It was just so PRETTY. Buskers along the street, and all of them really good, every second shop a hip and groovy café or restaurant so there were HEAPS to pick from, everyone really relaxed and happy, absolutely balmy temperature... Also they don't just have surf shops, like we do in Adelaide, they have specific brand surf shops. As in, this shop ONLY sells Billabong. This one ONLY sells Rip Curl. So anyway. Finally we decided on this place, Byron Fresh Café, because they had some lovely live music going on out the front and it looked like a pretty amazing menu. I took this same photo (mostly) and put it on Instagram and the thing got 13 likes in the hour.
So Byron with the denim jacket and floaty green skirt and necklace made out of shells and peacock earrings.
Because I haven't had a foodie photo in a while X3 My salmon and Cassie's pulled pork. They were AMAZING.
Byron Fucking Bay, man. So the next morning we met up with one of Cassie's friends who had just recently moved from Perth to Byron, and she took us to this café well off the main drag that we never would have found if not for local knowledge. Poached eggs with asparagus and truffle sauce with that view for breakfast? Yes plz gimme more. I'm convinced that if an eatery in Byron isn't at least great it won't survive the month. We never had anything there that wasn't incredible.
Breakfast view!
Other side of breakfast view!
After breakfast we headed up another windy--but bitumised!--road to the lighthouse I mentioned earlier. This is the view from the car park back to Byron.
Steep, steep cliffs and awesome crashing waves at the foot.
Looking back up to the lighthouse with a beautiful Cassie on the right =3
THAT'S A WHALE. It just dove down again as we looked at it and, knowing the buggers can stay under for, like, half an hour, we gave up waiting for it to resurface. So that's my whale photo.
I love this shot. Cassie and her friend whose name I've terribly forgotten because I suck with names. But she was awesome. I would like to meet her again.
And that there is the most easterly point on mainland Australia :D You could walk down to it but we opted not to. God that sea looks so inviting, though.
SKIRTS. And my cheap-arse sunnies I had to buy back in Coffs because I didn't realise how sunny it was going to be. And my cheap-arse new shoes I had to buy in Sydney because the pair I'd been wearing at the time broke. YEAH. I got very, very mildly sunburnt that day. The sort of sunburn you wouldn't notice if there weren't lines to go with it, and it'd faded by about lunch time the next day, but still. Sunburn in August, yep.
What a fitting end to Byron Bay :D Tomorrow, Brisbane right back down to Sydney.
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Date: Thu, Sep. 17th, 2015 12:25 pm (UTC)