Byron Bay: Eye Candy ahoy, tonsils and bad news.

Cath, Maureen and Lella...lovely girls!
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Hellooooooooooooooooooo there people from home!

Right, can we establish something here....you are now all going to take extremely good care of yourselves, be extra careful when driving , walking or doing anything involving hazards. I'm a long way away to be worrying about you lot so please just watch what you're doing. It really should be me that's having accidents with all these bonkers activities...but my Mum has proven it doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, things can happen that are none too pleasant. So I'm sending all my love to Mum for a speedy recovery and missing you dreadfully.

Byron Bay...rather nice I think you'll agree!
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OK....Byron Bay. Yep it's safe to say things started to go a bit pear shaped here. My first bus journey in OZ and it was a biggun...in fact there all bigguns cos this country is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge!!!! I really can't get my head round it. It's colossal...a mere hop skip and a jump on the map can take 12hrs for goodnessake! So I got up at 5, which was shortly after I went to bed actually, or at least felt like it, and Phil drove me all the way into the city to get the bus. Poor Gracie was so sleepy she couldn't say goodbye and apparently when I'd gone burst into tears saying "I want more guests!!!" Poor Lib may never get to rest! By the way, if you want to see pics of me and the Aberdees in Syders look at www.theaussieaberdees.blogspot.com. Lib is a blog lover too and took some great photos of my stay there, she's also very good at keeping up with the damn thing which I am not!!

Byron through a tree!
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So the bus journey was ok until....oh yes we had to have loud music! Not just elevator music or the type found in nice restaurants, no this had to be my least fav kind... that interspersed with very irritating adverts in twangy Aussie accents. "I'll just drift off with ear plugs in" thinks I...until very loud film starts up and it's Shrek 2 so I watch it cos I do love it. Then another movie and this is something I've never heard of...it's a kid's film and you know what that means for Shelley...she'll be crying her eyes out in public again!!! Me, tiredness and the old feelgood PG are best served in private where I can sob in without embarrassment.

A crap picture of the gang at the bar in Aquarious.
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By the way this journey was 13 and a half hours long...that's a long time on a bus I reckon. But lovely Libby had made me the best packed lunch, dinner, afternoon tea and multitude of snacks I could have wished for and so for most of the way I ate. And ate. And then it was time to have lunch. Then a snack. Then afternoon tea. You get the picture....Not the best idea to arrive in a surf town a lot fatter than you intended to....but hey...it was a long way.

About 4hrs from Byron, on gets this English girl who's got a seat booked next to mine and so we get chatting. She's lovely, very sweet and pours her heart out to me about her boyfriend back home and how she fancies this guy in Byron. Again I resist the temptation to start force feeding advice from the lofty age of 31, but this is tough. I'm gritting my teeth here. She invites me out for a drink tonight with her and her mate she's visiting and I think "Fantastic...not even got off  the bus and I've got myself some mates already!!"

Get picked up by the hostel I've booked and when I arrive it's dreadful. Dirty, nackered and I'm in a dorm with smelly boys who I fear may be waiting to keep me awake with their snoring. But I've booked for the night so must stay...a quick turn around with the old clothes and I'm ready to hit the town with the new mates. And I find them in their lovely, atmospheric, clean hostel with pool, bar and palm trees in the courtyard. I'll move in the morning.

So the new mates for the Byron chapter are Cath (girl from bus), Maureen (Irish...no kidding), John (Irish...suprised?) and Lellah (born in Africa, lived in London). A little too much detail here I'm thinking but it's pleasant for me to remember these things when I read this back next year and so you'll just have to lump it. These people are lovely, well except Maureen who is a little odd I find. Bit offish.

So it's great to go to a place where people have been for a while and know the ropes cos you don't have to think. They just take you to all the best places and if you're anything like me you just hold on to a sleeve and enjoy! First up was the Beach Hotel, a massive bar with stage and fabulous bands. And on walking in I noticed something unusual. The place was jampacked with.....(oooooo...did I keep anybody in suspense there!??? short break of a couple of days and I bet you were all gagging to see what was so interesting in that bar!) Well, it was jammed to the rafters with some of the most attractive men I've ever laid eyes on!!! No word of a lie...these guys were tall, tanned, muscle bound and there was about 5 to each girl.

"Are you lot seeing what I'm seeing?" says I to the ladies.

"Bloody hell yes, never seen anything like it!" says the girls.

Turns out there was a football (Aussie rules which means rugby in English) convention/tournament on that weekend and aren't we the lucky ones to have just arrived!! You couldn't walk 3m with out being chatted up. Lella is a very attractive girl and I turned round at one point to see her holding court with about 6 fabulous men hanging on her every word. Needless to say, there was a lot of frighteningly young fellas that headed for the hills as soon as I told them I was most likely a decade older than they were. This I found quite amusing and is a good way to get rid of the wingnuts.

Cath's guy turned up with his mates and we managed to have some fairly normal conversations with his friends. One of whom I was chatting to about the fabulous weather in NZ and he said maybe I was one of those people that always takes the sunshine with me. Nice thought...but I've recently been proven wrong.

So all in all it was a very good evening and before you go thinking I'm a total hussy there's nothing wrong with admiring the males in a drinking establishment. You might not talk about it...but if you were there you'd certainly all be thinking about it!! (And because I'm an old lady I declined the late night at "Cheeky Monkeys" and crashed out early...alone thanks very much!)

Sat 14th Oct

Woke up feeling ikle bit thirsty and disorientated. No kidding I hear you say. Suddenly realized it was 9.30 and I had half an hour to pack all my things, get dressed and check out of this rubbish hole or I'd have to stay another night. There was another guy frantically doing the same thing and after quizzing him, found out he was getting the hell out of that place too and going to the same hostel I was. So we had a giggly mad dash together with half packed bags across the road to what I like to think was the best place in town...Aquarius...if you're ever down under that way.

Had breakfast in the fantastic cafe in the hostel...all wooden bars and benches looking over the palm lined road where the oh so cool people were walking by and feeling oh so smug with ourselves. "This is the life!!" ,"Oh I'm really on holiday now", "How cool is this place?" "How cool are we!!!" I seem to say this line about being on holiday now perhaps every 2/3 days...very strange. Managed to get in the same dorm as the other guys and as dorms go it was lovely, although only one bathroom between 12!

Soon the other girls woke up and we made our way to the rather wonderful beach...well, would have been perfect was it not for the constant sandblasting. I'm not good with beaches at the best of times and this was just silly. There are advantages to traveling alone...had I not been with new found mates I would have said this is ridiculously uncomfortable..I'm off. But we braved it for as long as we could, rubbing lotion in like a professional exfoliation you'd pay a fortune for and crunching your way through a conversation.

Cath and I decided to go for a nice swim. Ha...ha,ha,ha. You know I really am finding out things about myself...I'm a land lover. Get in the waves and what happens? They try to strip your bikini off every 10 seconds. Now that's funny for about 10 seconds, until you get totally knocked over and rolled on to the beach like the proverbial wale. That's just not sexy...am no longer feeling smug in front of the cool surfer dudes.

So we decide to go for the local bush walk up to the lighthouse. Very lovely wander through the forest, up hills where the wild turkeys roam and the lizards skitter across the path and scare the bejesus out of you. The views are fantastic both ways down the coast and much admired by many other tourists with us. It seems the love of all things "most" has migrated across the Tasman sea as this is the "MOST EASTERLY POINT" of Australia advertised by plenty of signs along the way. Surely once is enough for this incredibly interesting fact?

And then it's back to the hostel for a wash up and happy hour followed by spag bol in the courtyard. God...do I have to go out drinking again? Utterly exhausted but I really can't miss out on anything and according to a girl in our dorm there's a fabulous band on at the Beach Hotel. So we go. And again the place is full of Byron's (and possibly the world's) finest men. But it really is like the wonderful views thing...you kind of get blase after a while and the handsomes all blend into one. But the band was completely amazing and I found a second wind to be able to dance all night leaving the youngsters begging to go home. She's still got it!

Sun 15th Oct

Now things started to go a little down hill from here. Woke up with a throat like I'd swallowed half the outback and feeling rougher than some of the lizards we'd seen the day before. And this is not a hangover cos I really didn't drink much the night before. In fact I couldn't get out of bed. As the day went on I started to get a little worried because every time I went to get up I just felt dizzy and exhausted and had to lie down again. Being prone to ravaged tonsils when I'm run down I kinda knew what was coming but was trying to fight it, daunted by the thought of being sick in a hostel dorm.

Got out of bed by 4 in the afternoon and made it to a pizza place with the girls. Had one bite of pizza and had to come home immediately feeling dreadful and go strait to bed. Me thinks the lifestyle has finally caught up with me.

Mon 16th Oct

These entries are going to be so boring cos it was not really a fun time...anyway the shopping list of activities goes something like this:

Get up, wobble about holding head, check tonsils for white blisters, go back to bed. Repeat as before...find tonsils covered in blisters...go back to bed. Get up, drag sorry backside to chemist and buy most effective throat sweets can find and take anti biotics have brought for emergencies only in countries with out chemists. Manage a milkshake with Lella and have very interesting conversation about the state of Africa. Forget how crap I feel for about 5mins.

Make it to the internet place that night whilst all and sundry are out on the lash. Think I'll just sit quietly and plonk away on the old blog and then give Mum and Dad a call. Call Mum and Dad to find Dan (brother) who lives in Manchester is there. He tries in vain to make up some rubbish why he's there before he caves in and gives me the news that Mum's been in a car crash and broken her neck. Feelin very far away from home now. Bit of a mess when I come out of the phone booth and it's not like you've got anywhere private to go for a bloody good blub! Go back to hostel and go to bed.