Happy Australia day for yesterday! We have now moved on up the coast, through a state border and timezone change from New South Wales to Surfers Paradise in Queensland. Unfortuantely, the weather has not changed and we are into our fifth day of non-stop rain!

Back in Byron Bay, we decided to take a trip to a little hippy village about an hour away from Byron called Nimbin. However, after waiting for an hour for our bus, it turns out that bus was cancelled, so we got transferred onto a shuttle bus. The bus was playing hippy tunes and was set up like a big old campervan. Due to all the rain, the roads were really flooded, especially in the valleys around the farmlands where water levels swamped big tree trucks right up to the top branches. Australia really isn't built to cope with the rain! We reached one particually flooded road where 4x4's were driving through and the water was up to their windscreens, like right over the bonnets! One car emerged on the other side and preceeded to start billowing with smoke from under the car! Instead, our bus driver decided to take a detour around the hills, which took another hour to reach the town. We passed an old aboriginal rock site just outside of Nimbin, which we stopped to take a photo of. The bus driver then told us it was his job to officially notify us not to take Marijuana while in Nimbin as it is illegal! Nice to know we thought!

By the time we arrived in Nimbin, we only had two hours to stay there. As soon as we got off the bus we were met by loads of hippies and as we walked along the main street, countless people offered us weed and cookies (not of the chocolate chip variety!). We went to the, apparently famous, Rainbow cafe for our lunch and then mooched around the town and museum full of artifacts from the towns history of marijuana! It is apparently the weed capital of Australia. Everyone there is high, but, very friendly!

After a long drive back, we decided to take a walk along the beach in Byron as the rain had eased off a little. We walked until we reached the most eaterly point of the Australian mainland and then up to the lighthouse which was nice.

As mentioned at the start of this blog, today we have took our first greyhound trip up to Surfers Paradise to be met by more rain. Surfers is meant to be the 'Miami of Australia'. It is a lot more commerical with numerous high-rise buildings lining the sea front. We had a mooch around the shops to cheer ourselves up from the miserable weather, before returning to our hostel. We are just staying here for one night, before tomorrow trying a new accommodation experience. When we were in Barraba, Patrick told us about a website called couch surfing, where people offer up their sofas or spare rooms to travellers. So, we are booked in for two nights staying with someone in Surfers. The bonus is it is a couple of nights accommodation free! We will see how we like it and how it goes and I will let you all know soon!

Amy. x