A Day at Byron Bay

As you may recall from last week, we decided to escape to the beach for a while just so we could get away from the whirling swirling wind tunnel known as our bedrooms.

Where we live in Brisbane may not be on the beach, but for some time we have been grateful to live in such a perfect location to access two top quality beach areas in Australia. We are an hour and a quarter’s drive from both the Sunshine Coast to the north and the Gold Coast to the south.

Perfect!

But this time we decided to go a little further, venturing into New South Wales and the state’s second most visited location, Byron Bay. Byron Bay is about 190 kms from our place, being a bit further south than the Gold Coast. We were very surprised, and please, to find our journey only took a tad more than two hours.

My wife organised the accommodation, which cost a whopping $292 for just one night. I was expecting a detached three-bedroom villa on the beach for that money. Instead, we got this…….

Whilst our room was huge and lovely, the layout wasn’t as it had been explained to us. We though we were getting two bedrooms and a separate lounge, but it didn’t turn out that way. When we asked about this at reception, we were told we had been upgraded for free to a better size of accommodation. The room we were in would normally cost $200 more per night!

Crikey! $492 a night? So Byron Bay is not the cheapest holiday destination we have been to. But what was it like?

Byron Bay is a very hip town, hip as in “hippy”. It’s a laid back, new age, dreadlocks, surfer dudes kind of place. With lots of pubs.

It is also famous for being Australia mainland’s furthest point east. So we went to take a look. Apparently, it was up through this path……..

Here it is, Australia’s furthest point east!

Oh! Apparently not. It was further up the road, this way…..

Along this path……

By this sign…..

Here…..

A bit too steep for roly poly……

…… so we didn’t. Byron Bay had a quiet beach…..

…. and a busier “patrolled” beach, you must always swim between the flags, remember?

And the afore mentioned surfer dudes.

We liked Byron Bay a lot. We’ll go again, but at those prices, next time we’ll have the tent.

On our way back, we drove through Coomera, it’s about halfway between Byron Bay and our home. Why mention that? Because in record rainfalls, the heaviest for about a century, the Coomera area copped 360mm of rain in one 24 hour period the day after we drove through.

360mm!

That’s a whole months worth of rainfall all at once. And with it, plenty of damage. We are talking about a multi million dollar damages bill. Makes my few hundred litres over the bedroom floors seem quite petty doesn’t it?