Circumspencing the Globe

I’ve been living large with Kerry and Phil, splurging left and right.  They’re gone now, so I’m back to my solo existence.  But for those of you who appreciate fine dining, you’ll find some handy references below.

We completed our two-day drive northward to Byron Bay on Friday evening, January 10.  Hours earlier, we had lunch in Port Macquarie in a cafe overlooking the spot where the town’s river runs into the ocean.  That turned out to be one of our more basic lunches.  Before we left that town, we stopped off at the koala hospital, where the little animals are housed permanently or temporarily, depending on their condition.  Believe it or not, many of the koalas were suffering from chlamydia.  I guess we know what they’re doing during the five or six hours they’re actually awake each day.  Interestingly, koalas have two thumbs on each hand to assist in tree climbing.  And it sounds like they’ve been doing a little too much climbing into neighboring trees, if ya know what I mean.

Anyhoo, when we arrived in Byron Bay, we couldn’t find a place to stay.  We’d called a few places during the drive, but all were fully booked.  We ended up staying at the nicest resort in town, The Byron at Byron.  (The level of service far exceeded the creativity that went into coming up with the place’s name.)  This time Kerry and Phil were open to having the three of us share a room, so that’s what we did, notwithstanding the snoring issues.

Below:  shots from around Byron Bay.

We had lunch on Saturday at a luxurious oceanfront hotel restaurant called Rae’s, a cloth-napkins-and-tablecloth establishment the backpacker crowd definitely does not frequent.  I and Phil each had giant prawns in curry sauce.  (A meal which made driving with the windows up risky.)  Incidentally, our lunch in Bondi Beach back in Sydney was at a place called Iceberg, which also boasts a spectacular ocean view and an amazing menu.  There I had the stingray.  Mmmm, stingray.  Kerry has a number of “kerryisms” about how the world works.  One of them is that whenever there’s an unfamiliar type of fish on the menu that you ask the waiter or waitress to describe, the description is always the same:  “it’s a white, flakey fish.”  Sure enough, when I asked what stingray was like, the waiter said, “it’s white and flakey.”  And so it was.

Also worth mentioning is a spectacular restaurant in Sydney called Aqua Dining where the three of us had dinner one night on Phil’s recommendation.  It sits just by the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the north shore, with (Coney Island-like) Luna Park on one side and an olympic-size pool on the other.  But back to Byron Bay…

Saturday afternoon we took a road trip inland from Byron Bay to a small town called Nimbin.  All of the townspeople seem to be united around a single cause:  the legalization of marijuana.  There’s a “Marijuana Embassy” adjacent to a marijuana den.  Hanging from the ceiling behind the Embassy’s counter, and running the entire length of the room, is a massive joint the size of a whale-shark.  Across the street there’s a place called “Bringabong,” whose sign is written in the same fonte as the surfing gear company Billabong.  A Cheech and Chong movie could be filmed in the town without any modifications.  Despite the common aspiration of the townspeople to be mellow and free to do as they please, they seemed like a washed out, unhappy bunch, and several yelling bouts erupted on the streets.  We left Nimbin the way we came, driving for an hour through very green hills populated by cows like the dales of Ireland. 

Both Friday and Saturday nights, we ate in Byron Bay at a restaurant called The Balcony, which affords diners a perfect view of the street activity below.  We all tried the peppered kangaroo.  As a town, Byron Bay is brimming with young people, most staying at one of the many hostels in town.  Surfing-related boutiques and cafes line the streets.  The beach is just a few blocks from the center of town.  Lord Byron’s grandfather is the namesake.

Below:  a storefront in Nimbin, two shots of the coastal rain forest, and the three amigos at The Balcony.

After dinner Saturday, we left Byron (the town) and returned to The Byron at Byron (the resort).  We took a late-night swim in the pool and a sauna.

Sunday morning Kerry and Phil left with the rental car for the airport up on the Gold Coast and flew home.  I slept in at the resort.  When I got up, the room sure felt quiet.  But one of the plasma TVs helped cure that problem.  But I missed my buddies, who kept me laughing and on my toes for a week.  Both rolled with the punches without kvetching, whether those punches involved imperfect health or thwarted Plan As.  (I, by contrast, just threw tantrums.)  And they had me doing fun things and going to top-end places not normally on a six-month, low-brow traveler’s itinerary.

Before I left the resort, I wandered through the coastal rain forest, which abuts the property.  During the walk, I spotted a (venomous) black snake coiled in an eye-level frond about an arm’s reach away, a large spider in the center of its web also about an arm’s reach away, and a couple long, wiggly lizards.  After, I left the resort and found a hostel in town.

Late that same afternoon, I hiked up to the lighthouse and to the nearby rocks that mark the most easterly point of all of Australia.  That hike also involved traversing the rain forest.

Today I joined a group surf lesson at the main beach.  In the group were Norwegians, French Canadians, English and Australians.  It’s early evening now, and in a couple hours I’ll board a bus that will drive through the night all the way back to Sydney.  Then, after another day and a half in Sydney, sadly, I’ll be saying goodbye to Australia once and for all, but hopefully not forever.  G’day for now.

Tags: Australia, Byron Bay, New South Wales, Nimbin, Sydney, Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 4:24 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.