March 17 - Australia: Byron Bay, New South Wales

Today was a long run for Jon, so he got up at some ridiculous hour to run 18 miles.  Last night, I tried to hire a bike so I could go with him, but it was too late in the evening to arrange for one.  So he was on his own.  When he got back, we made breakfast and then went into town to find a car to hire for the day.  We found a little Corolla for next to nothing and took off for the day.

Nimbin

We made plans to go to Nimbin, which is a hippie commune about 75 kilometers outside of Byron Bay.  The roads to get there were a bunch of one-lane roads through little towns and macadamia nut orchards.  The rental car company gave us a map to get there, but it was only vaguely helpful.  So an hour and a half and ten U-Turns later, we finally drove into Nimbin at around 3:00PM.

It's a really cute little town full of dead heads (without the Grateful Dead because no one in Australia really listens to them), bead shops, and artist booths.   

The Little Town of Nimbin

We had lunch at a little cafe along the main strip of stores.  Jon tells me that Nimbin put itself on the map in the 1970s when they had some sort of love-fest or something.  And it certainly hasn't lost any of the hippie feel in the past thirty years, either.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, offered us pot/hashish/sensimilla/marijuana/etc, etc.  It was like being in a Grateful Dead show all over again!  Jon would like to go on record by saying that this is hardly the first time we've been offered drugs on this trip.  "Malawi Gold" was a big selling item in Malawi, and everyone was selling in Kathmandu.  It just makes sense that the same would be true here in Nimbin.

Anyway, in between our turning down very kind offers of drugs, we walked around town and made our way to the Community Center where there was an arts-and-crafts show.  This show was full of local artisans selling their crafts, in addition to various people selling their own clothes.  Sort of like a big garage sale with some unique stuff thrown in.  I fell in love with a wind chime set made of old forks and some marbles.  It sounds weird, I know, but it's actually quite lovely.  Strange, though, because I'm not into contemporary art at all.  But for some reason, I just had to have this little wind chime for a one-bedroom New York apartment.

Maybe it was all the pot smoke in the air.

A Van at the Community Center - look at the sign in the background

The Drive Back to Byron Bay

Driving back to Byron Bay was a little bit easier than the drive out.  We only had to make four U-Turns!  But we did see some lovely scenery and gorgeous views of the countryside.  At one point, we drove through Dunoon which is the Macadamia Nut Capital of Australia.  It was a beautiful drive, and a very nice day for it.

Macadamia Nut Orchard

Back at the apartment, we met our new roommates Stefan from New York and Moira from Glasgow.  We hung out and talked to them for a while and then we went into town for more pizza.  We loved last night's pizza so much that we wanted to go back and get more.  So we ordered another round of Stella Artois Schooies and a Super Giant veggie pizza.  

While we were there, we decided it was time to record all the Aussie colloquialisms that we know of.  And since our round-the-world trip is coming to an end, we also made a list of random thoughts about our trip.