We arrived late after our coach journey from Coff's Harbour, and we were greeted at our next hostel with a free upgrade to a nice king ensuite room (not bad considering we booked two dorm beds).

The following day was spent exploring our surroundings, and were pleased to find a bit more on offer compared to Coff's Harbour, but it was still a nice laid back beach town. It boasted plenty of surf shops, cafe's and restaurants to choose from. At the weekend the place was full of surfers and travellers, and had a very hippy vibe.

I managed to win a few dollars and beers taking on the locals in a pool competition at the Beach Hotel, where we were to spend a fair bit of time over the next few days, sampling their live music and generous food portions. We enjoyed the large beach when the weather allowed us to, and watched the surfers do their stuff. One evening we also managed to spot some whales off the coast making their way north, we're looking forward to seeing them up close fairly soon. After only a couple of nights,we were upgraded once again after a disagreement with a fellow Canadian traveller in the early hours! (now we had a balcony too, still at dorm room prices, cheers buddy!)

When the weather was not so great we took the opportunity to book ourselves on some trips further up the coast, as well as a camper van in New Zealand. This took plenty of shopping around the local travel agents and the internet followed by countless latte's & tea, which killed some time while it was raining. We were pleased to bag ourselves some good deals in the end.

On our last full day in Byron we took a walk up to the Lighthouse on the Cape Byron Headland Reserve, which overlooked the bay. This also included mainland Australia's most easterly point, and other great viewpoints. Getting up there worked up a sweat so lunch at the lighthouse preceded our walk back on the bush track cutting through the headland returning to the bay. We made use of the public BBQ's on offer for our first own cooked Aussie barbie that evening, and were joined by a couple of unwanted guests in the shape of turkey's, who ended up eating our leftover chicken sausages!

Our final day at Byron involved another BBQ lunch, this time interrupted by a rather drunk local who thought the public equipment belonged to him alone. All in all we enjoyed our time relaxing in Byron Bay and look forwards to more beach actin in our next destination - Surfers Paradise.