We got through a 12 hour bus journey from Sydney to Byron Bay ok, but it was a struggle. Its virtually impossible to sleep, and when people recline their chairs to the point of laying in your lap, with no consideration for others, it's also incredibly difficult to get comfortable (and remain calm!).

We arrived at 6.10am, a bit of a pain considering the motel we booked didn't open until 8am, still, we had to lug our bags through the town so that wasted some time. Luckily we past the motel on the bus, otherwise we would have struggled to find it. We looked like rifraff, sitting on our backpacks, one either side of the reception doors, munching on bananas. Once reception opened, we couldnt get in our room til 12, so we had a fair few hours to kill.

We hunted out some coffee, had some breakfast and tried to stay awake. We had a walk into Bryon Bay town, and paid a little visit to Woolworths, long live Woolworths! They still opperate in Australia, but they're an actual supermarket, like Tesco, Sainsbury etc, no games, penny sweets, toys or stationary that Woolworths was favoured for when we were young and used to bug our parents and granparents to take us there to buy something :-)
We decided to head back after a while as we were really starting to lag with no sleep. The couple who ran the motel were really nice, especially the man, Steve, who got our room cleaned first so we could get in and rest our weary heads. He also offered to cut our hair, which was very nice of him, but came out of the blue, so we also think it was a kind of hint that our hair needed a bit of TLC.

The weather in Byron Bay isn't quite ideal. It's still warm, but the sun rarely shows its face and it's on and off raining. We're staying in a motel as opposed to a hostel as literally everywhere we tried was full as we mentioned in our previous blog. It's about a 15 minute walk from town, and in the rain with no brolly, it's a bit of a trek. So we decided that evening, we would stay in, do some ironing, washing and watch a few dvds. The life of a traveller isn't about going out partying every night, there's not enough time sometimes and simply, not anywhere near enough money.

The next day we set our alarms early to get a full day in as we're only here for two nights, so this is our last day and night. We arise, pull the curtains open to torrential rain. Brilliant. We get ready, get our hoodies on, borrow a big umbrella from reception and head into town. Byron Bay is so cute, which is a funny way of describing it, but it is. It's quite quaint even though its full to the brim of travellers and caters very much for them. There are no high rise buildings or shops, most are just one level and have quite similar shop faces. It reminds us both of a seaside town. It's strange how when you walk out of town to where our motel is, it's a very residential area, with a 'community' feel about it.

Unfortunatley, the flooding in Queensland has got worse in terms of the weather not picking up and more of the highway and roads seem to be taking a battering. just that morning, a bridge between Noosa and Rainbow Beach either collapsed or flooded completely. The parts of the Pacific Highway that are badly flooded are set on low ground, which is why they've been effected the worst. Emma's Uncle lives in Queensland and has said it's the worst weather he's ever known out here. Because of this new information, we yet again had to spend a fair few hours in Peter Pans Travel Shop getting advice and finding out what's going on. We booked our Fraser Island 4WD camping trip and our Whitsundays sailing trip, in the hopes that we'll be able to make it there (fingers crossed please everyone). We've also had to change our plans around even more. We're now coming back on ourseleves, again if we even make it up north, to get a flight from Brisbane to Airlie Beach instead of getting the Greyhound. If we didn't have Uluru booked, we probably would have abandoned the East coast, and explored some of the West coast. Alas, we're certainly having an adventure whatever we end up doing.

Determined not to waste our last day in Byron, and despite the weather, we had a walk round town, do what you should always do in a seaside town and get an icecream, and headed to the beach. Its pretty beautiful, impressive rocks and cliffs a long stretch of beach and surfers not put off by the weather. We went for some lunch and tea in an award winning restuarant on the beach called Fish Heads.

Early evening we headed back and went for dinner and a few drinks in Cheeky Monkeys, we had to then come back and pack. Again.

Byron Bay came and went too fast. We would have loved to spend more time there, but our tight schedule didn't allow it.

We feel like we're in a bit of a rushed daze. Over the next few weeks, the longest we're staying anywhere is 3 nights, which goes really fast. Constantly packing and unpacking makes you not venture past the first quarter of the contents of your bag.

FYI; 'Puaare creeamee' (pure cream) - the two words Candy thinks she's prefected in an Austrailian accent... Questionable.

We're off to Surfers Paradise tomorrow in Queensland, where the time goes back an hour. We didn't realise this, we thought it was 35 minutes away, as opposed to 1 hour 35 minutes.