After leaving Port Macquarie late in the evening we had 410km to cover in darkness on the Pacific Highway, the danger of wildlife (Kangaroos actually run!? hop!? Bounce!? ……whatever they do into the road) coupled with huge 18-wheelers travelling at ridiculous speeds was enough to see Jo in a less than calm state forcing us to crawl along at 90kms an hour.

When we were about 40kms from Byron Bay the rain started…. my word, it was heavy! We have never seen rain like it, you could barely see out of the windscreen and the only thing stopping us from pulling over were signs stating the road is prone to flooding and depth measurements showing a potential 2 metres left us in fear of waking up with a croc in our bed!

We made it to Byron Bay at 11.40pm and could tell straight away that it was a lively place; it reminded us of a holiday resort like Ibiza….. due to our tiredness we looked for a place to park the crib and get some sleep, a cozy little side street made up of businesses closed for the night seemed like a good place…. and it was until 5.41am when we were woken by a rather rude policeman banging on our window telling us to move on despite the fact you are allowed to park a campervan anywhere in Oz as long as it is safe to do so and not signposted to the contrary, Jo fancied a little argument but I managed to avoid the “I’m a nurse speech” and drove on to a rest stop!

The next morning we had a 20 minute drive back into Byron Bay and checked out what was on offer…. It was very busy so after a look round the information centre we decided to check out Nimbin, a little town not too far away which consists of brightly coloured buildings with a very hippie culture and lots of weed….. after Jo had finished her spliff (ha ha, yeah right! I’m surprised she didn’t offer to help the troubled drug addicted souls) we hit the road again towards Noosa!