Another late entry, given we're in Brisbane at the mo and leaving for New Zealand tomorrow, but hey better late than never. Byron Bay was lovely. It's quite a small place. Surf shops and hippie style clothes everywhere. Kind of the North Laines crossed with Cornwall. There was only one main road, which lead to the beach. Such a beautiful beach!!! The hostel we stayed in, the Arts Factory, was really nice. Very laid back. Great breakfasts. They sorted out an inter-hostel football competition which Myles was made up about! His team came second, lost on penalties. As you can imagine it was later fully explained to me how they were cheated out of coming first. Hmmm. That day I went sea kayaking to see dolphins, and oh my god, it was THE ost amazing experience. Probably best few hours Ive had on this trip so far. I'll explain... Dolphins dont usually stay around a group of kayakers for very long, normally around 5 mins max. Also the day before Andrew, our leader, hadnt seen any dolphins when they went out. So when a storm loomed and we had to make our way back onto another beach, the day wasnt looking all that good. However, we'd literally just sat down to have a hot drink when we noticed a group of kayaks out to sea seemed to be very interested in something. We then realised there was dolphins right next to them. Feeling a little annoyed at this point-theyd surely done this on purpose, after spending ages looking for them! This isnt really a joke, dolphins are actually really intelligent and are very capable of tricking people! Anyhoo we all got our kayaks out in record speed. And wow. It just got better and better. There was so many dolphins, must have been between 20 and 30! And there were baby ones! The other group went soon after that for some rediculous reason. And so for the next hour we watched in amazemant as the dolphins, first of slept, then played around, the babies showing off jumping around, coming so close to us that we could almost touch them, and even following us! Oh if anyones interested, dolphins have a very interesting way of sleeping. The sleep in formation, making a circle, with the younger ones in the middle. They only sleep for a few minutes at a time but do this very frequently. They only have one half of their brain asleep at a time. For instance the right side of their brain will sleep and theyll have their right eye closed. Also their sonar echo radar will 'go to sleep'. There was loads of times when Andrew wanted to check we werent bothering them so wed start to move away, but the dolphins would actually follow us. So cool. For some reason they were really interested in us! Andrew said it was the best kayak hed had. he also took some footage on his video camera! and hes gonna edit it down and send it as a DVD to me!!! Its really hard to get across how wonderful the experience really was. Dolphins are just such beautiful animals and was so cool to be able to watch them for so long interacting with each other. There were times to when some were actually watchiung us. They came right up to the surface and you could see their eyes on you. So so cool. So Ill stop going on about dolphins now! Umm other things we did in Byron Bay... lots of time at the beach! Had some really good weather. Its so crazy that its their winter over here! went on a day trip to a waterfall, Channon Market (loved the market. such a great atmosphere, loads of families having picnics on the grass, all organic gorgeous food being sold, there was even a bead shop! just like being back at home!) also went to Nimbin...hmmm...recommended to me by my dad, we were to discover the town is really just one happy street. lots of cookies being sold, lots of ppl smoking, looking very happy and chilled, peace and love to all...need I say more. There was even a museum based solely on this. Quite funny. So yeh, had really nice time in Byron Bay. Will put up a Brisbane postcard when I can. Have ppl got their China postcards yet? G x