Having spent a week in Sydney I thought I would bail to explore the coast up to Byron Bay. This would mean spending New Year’s Eve in Byron. Leaving everything until the last minute meant that the only chance of getting accommodation was to take a surf camp up the coast and have them arrange a hostel for me. This worked a treat and I looked forward to the opportunity to spend time in the water as opposed to on the road. Being a nomad makes conversation quite tiresome at times. While it’s great to have the ‘where are you from?’ card to pull from the back pocket as a conversation starter, a lot of people are simply travelling and so it’s often a case of same conversation different person. Naturally you meet some cool characters along the way but in the main backpackers are a very polite bunch unless they are travelling with a large group of mates. Thus, the surf camp would provide me with a new scenario; same people and the possibility of a different conversation after a couple of days.
Stormy weather had blown in from the West Coast making the swell pretty big. Normally this is a good thing for surfing but for novices the waves were too big, had too much energy and crashed too early. Thus, paddling out beyond the break took a lot of work. Inevitably the power of the waves against a 9ft foam board meant that the effort to get behind the break made you think twice about catching a wave back into the impact zone. Five days of non-stop rain made for tricky learning and left little opportunity to chill on the beach, catch some rays and wait for better conditions. Often it was just easiest to float on the board out the back and pretend that you were waiting for the perfect barrel to come to shore. Still, one session was awesome and like learning anything new it’s a case of paying attention and letting the pennies drop. If you have the patience then you will pretty much figure most things out. Surfing is great fun and there is no need to master it as the fun is in trying. From what I can make out even experienced surfers get very little return for their time in the water and so it’s just a game of patience ... something I have lots of. It’s cool to think that whenever I visit Manly, Malibu or Mayo that I can rent a board for a couple of hours and have some fun with it.
The camp itself was carnage; just like being back in college. Like any group tour the people can be hit and miss; in this case it was about 50/50. I got on well with a bunch of people but the most fun were a group of kiwi girls who took me under their wing for some more partying by the time we got to Byron Bay. It was great being back in that zone again as it was exactly what I needed. We had a very cool bunch of instructors who invited everybody on tour to their beach party on New Year’s Eve even though we were no longer on camp. I still can’t understand a word they say but they are effectively professional degenerates buzzing off a cocktail of surf and weed by day and booze and coke by night. Fun people to be around until their wheels inevitably fall off as they float to a more mind-altering buzz. I had originally feared that the surfer-set would be particularly flaky and annoyingly vain. Team Billabong, who stayed with us on camp, were exactly that. They were very into their bodies and overly ladish. Our instructors weren’t like that at all; cool for me is when you can naturally transcend the box people put you into and these guys did it well even if they were wasted half the time.
Of course, if kids need any convincing that smoking lots and lots of pot is bad for you then they should take a trip to Nimbin. This is a town not too far from Byron Bay where a bunch of travelling hippies decided to stop and stick around for a while. I could see why they did as the scenery is pretty cool. In 1973 they organised Aquarius; a festival which sounds a bit like it might have been a Woodstock of sorts. The hippies remained and attracted a whole bunch of people like them. Interestingly they didn’t attract too many as it is still a one-street town. While they flouted the law they were left pretty much left to their own devices.
Unfortunately Nimbin has the highest rates of bi-polar and schizophrenia in Australia and so the government put two and two together and called in the law; much to the angst of the backpacker who blows in to buy some ‘cookies’. Police presence has increased meaningfully to such an extent that street dealing has been driven down the lanes much like anywhere else. This doesn’t stop signage pointing out that there can’t be anything illegal about nature but for sure something has changed. I’m all into peace, love and happiness but I’m a little suspicious of hippies who think that love means sex and that peace and happiness means getting stoned. The original hippy message is inevitably ‘wasted’ and Nimbin seems such a place. Still, it’s funny seeing a shrivelled up aul’ lad sitting on an armchair in the middle of the street high as a kite. He laughed at absolutely nothing and could barely walk. The shame is that he is probably forty.
Byron Bay itself is a pretty cool place. The week between Christmas and New Year is always pandemonium as it is over-run with tourists, both Australian and international. It’s annoying having to queue half an hour for a burrito but such is the damage curious blow-ins like me do to the local area. The old chilled out alternative surfing town of Byron Bay is what everybody wants to see but the arrival of tourism makes it now look and feel like any other modern beach town with its weekenders and consumers. I’m sure it quietens down again but once an area has given in to the temptation of the tourist dollar it is never the same again. Probably best to visit when no-one else is there but by all accounts a good party town with a hint of the original arty and surfer vibe to make it a beach town with a difference.
Will talk soon.
Giller