And now for my final destination before hitting Brisbane and heading out the New Zealand. Unfortunately the weather was pretty rubbish and it was certainly not condusive to much in Byron Bay. However I did land up in a 9 bed mixed dorm with a cool bunch of people that I spent the evening chatting to & went on a great hike in the on off rain to the Cape Byron lighthouse and the Eastern tip of the mainland of Australia.
I had a lovely Finish girl with me and we had a good chat all the way there and back and took a wrong turn so what would have been a three hour trip landed up being a four trip. Had I bothered to look at the map I would probably have realised that I was going in the wrong direction much sooner than I did and would probably have found an easier route back but it was good fun all the same rain and all.
We did a little cigarette butt picking off the beach on the last leg of our journey as there are clearly a large number of people that believe a beach is as good an ashtray as any other place even though the butts get eaten by birds which gives them cancer or find their way into the sea on windy days & get eaten by turtles which kills them too. So sad really what we do to this world in our oblivion. There is a a degree of awareness in Australia about cigarette buts & platic bags & the danger of getting washed to the Great Barrier Reef to help with its demise as well as both getting eating by animals and birds & killing them too.
Headed back up to Brisbane in the pouring rain for a couple of days which at this point was just a means to an end for me. Brisbane is just a city really and I would not have been at all bothered if I missed it in its entirety. I have spoken to travellers who like it from a work perspective as it is not really a much of a touristy spot. I did however meet a lovely Irish girl and we had an absolute giggle over our Kiwi room mate who seemed a little strange. She did a lot of prancing around our 8 bed dorm room naked, walked around the hostel naked except for her handbag & her gown which only just covered her butt, spent a lot of time in front of the mirror only half covered (initially a towel to her waist & then a top to her hips which she proceeded to lift to check out her butt). Soooooo strange. Perhaps just a serious exhibitionist.
I did unfortunately have an unpleasant experience with Greyhound as I was about to head out to the airport. I had a Cairns to Byron Bay ticket that had 111km's left at the the end of my journey so I thought I might as well just catch a bus to the airport and then it was all sorted as all the hostels are either close to the transit centre or do pick ups and drop off from the transit centre. I booked this leg of my journey on the 7th of November before I left Harvey Bay after which I still had an additional 3 bus journeys to get to Byron Bay. I also put my cel number on each booking that I made so that I could be contacted if there were any issues. I double checked my trip when I got to Brisbane on the 18th & checked in with the Greyhound Desk to get a ticket for my bag for the 12.30pm bus at about 11.15am on the 20th. At no point did anyone say there was an issue with my journey. Only at 12.25 when I needed to be at the airport at 2pm did I get called over a loud speaker and was told that I should not have booked that ticket as my ticket was a Cairns/Byron Bay ticket and I could not backtrack so I would have to find my own way to the airport. Needless to say I was not the happiest person on earth being told at the very last minute that I had nothing booked to get to the airport. Thankfully the transit centre is a couple of floors above the railway station so I was able to run down to the station and grab a train so a sticky situation was averted thankfully but I just could not believe that they would do that to someone.
As it turned out I had given myself extra time to get to the airport so I had no need to panic and get stressed. I just haf to move very smartly to get my train & I was able to leave gorgeous, beautiful, amazing Oz barely a trouble & I am even more pleased to report that the spider I met on the bathroom door in the Karijini National Park was the one and only 'encounter' I had with any scary spiders. The universe must have known to keep me safe. Thank you darling universe :-)
