Byron Bay, possibly the nicest mainland place on the Australian East Coast.

We got there in the morning on the Monday and spent the day having a look around, it's a pretty small place and we got back to our hostel early in the afternoon. I also found a Macbeth shoe shop that had just opened and they were selling shoes really cheaply, so I treated myself to a bargain pair of new shoes. I'm now carrying around 5 pairs of shoes, which is really unlike me! The hostel was awesome, it had two floors in our little house and we got the top floor to ourselves. It was Independance Day and out here they use any excuse to have a party, so me and Grace went downstairs to the bar to help them set up the decorations. Neither of us are the most artistic of people and just hung streamers everywhere, we did get a few free drinks from it though. We spent the night in the bar, took part in a relay race which saw Grace ride a small bike around the bar and me attempt to navigate around the bar whilst lying flat on a skateboard, this didn't go too well and we lost. Elena turned up in the evening, having got a later bus from Brisbane but didn't come out that night. We went to a bar called Cheeky Monkeys where their unique selling point was that you could dance on the tables. Although the dancefloor was just made up of tables, so you didn't really have a choice.

We had a lie-in the next day and then spent the afternoon walking up to the lighthouse, Byron Bay's tourist attraction. It's located on the most Easternly point of mainland Australia and from there you can just stand and whale watch. I hadn't been too successful in seeing any whales but then I remembered that I had my glasses, and after that I saw loads! We treated ourselves to milkshakes and ice creams while we were up there and had a nice walk back along the beach.

Our last day in Byron Bay was spent just chilling on the beach. It sucks that we're in winter as although it's still warm and would never be classed as winter back home, it's still not really that hot. So we were lying on the beach in our hoodies until we decided to go back and sit in the warmth of the hostel kitchen. We watched a bit of the State of Origin rugby game until getting bored, and just waited around until our late, overnight bus to Newcastle.