On the evening of the 22nd we walked along Byron beach and grabbed our first coffee together! It was great just to sit down and chill in a coffee shop, it felt like I hadn't done that for AGES. Even though my Chai Latte was $5, it was so worth it. We did a quick shop, went back to our camp and got ready to meet Alex, my Sydney friend I met in Vietnam! She was in Byron with some friends for the week so we managed to meet in the evening and had a good catch up in a few bars, with a bit of jelly wrestling too and then onto a bar/club. We were all for a good old dance, it was great fun and great music too! We left about 3pm and this guy I was talking to had "lost his friends" so started walking back to the car with us. He was trying to get home, which was 40-50minutes away, and at first Lisa told him she would drop the girls off at our camp site and then take him back because he "had no way of getting home". However when we arrived at the campsite we realised it would have taken 2 hours to drive him there and back so we decided to leave him in the town waiting for us. Let's hope he wasn't waiting for too long. Irresponsible men ey!

On Tuesday 23 we decided to do a mini road trip loop inland from Byron Bay. The drive was beautiful, jaw-dropping in fact! We were driving along these small country roads, over little streams, through the mountains and trees, it was an incredible place. We stopped off in some little towns on the way but it was all very quiet and you would see about 4 people in each town, spooky! We did discover an amazing tea, coffee, cake, lunch shop in the town of Tyalgum. So we had our quick lunch on the grass outside (tuna sandwich for me) whilst poor Chrissy attempted to get a fly out of her ear (hilarious) and then enjoyed a tea and carrot cake to share in the cafe for an hour. They had decorated the cafe beautifully, real vintage style, all pink with teddies and homemade chutneys and fudge...oh I could go on. Delicious anyhow!

Back on the road we ended up in Border Rangers National Park. Took some photos at the entrance sign as we were literally only seen five other cars during the whole day, so we were really proud we were "off-the-beaten track" exploring the true Australia! We stopped at a few look outs but the sun was setting quickly so we tried to find the camp site which ended up being about another 40 minute drive. We set up our tents and headed out to find some kindling for the bonfire. Our car looked impressive decorated with wood outside and inside as we arrived back at camp to find another couple cooking dinner. We didn't realise they were there but they heard us singing Ruldolf the Red Nosed Reindeer on our way back as our car literally looked like a reindeer with antlers. Think we were all a little high on something...we hadn't even been to Nimbin at this point (drug town!). Chrissy and I had been assigned to start the campfire whilst Lisa and Julia did what they do best, cook! It took WAY too long, dinner was ready and we still hadn't managed to keep the fire going. So we gave up and sat down for dinner and chatted to the Australian couple whilst they helped start the fire again. Dinner was great and by the time we finished the Aussie guy had managed to start and maintain the fire! Yey. Even though we were all full from dinner we tucked into Marshmallows and some German dough stuff that you roll down the stick - it is like dough with herbs and was actually really tasty, a bit like Pizza Express dough balls! So we ended up eating around the campfire whilst the couple played some tunes on their guitar. It was a great night but we were all so tired from the lack of sleep the night before we went to bed fairly early. Tonight was the night Lisa and I decided to spoony so we lay on my sleeping bag whilst we used hers as a duvet. It was SO comfortable and warm, we ended up doing this every night even when it wasn't cold!

An early start on 24 April. We left the National Park (couldn't find any walks to do so just carried on driving). We eventually made it to the hippy town of Nimbin which was full of middle aged to old hippy people with dreadlocks. In the space of half an hour we were offered drugs of all kinds by 4 different people, literally just walking through the village. It was a very colourful village, with sweet little boutique shops, graffiti everywhere, all kinds of crazy saying and messages written on everything and anything. We didn't want to buy anything not even from the bakery just in case some drugs ended up in them the place was the dodgy. Even the odd Nimbin Museum was crazy weird - see the photos (when I eventually get around to uploading them)! I ended up bumping into two Swedish girls who did the PADI course with me in Thailand so stopped and had a quick catch up- small world hey. We didn't last too long in Nimbin so on our way back to Byron we stopped off at Rocky Creek Damn which was a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. We planned to go for a walk but ended up chilling on the wall by lake and messing around taking stupid photos instead after a quick picnic. We decided to head back to the usual camp site rather than searching for others so headed there and grabbed some dinner before heading to bed.

Thursday 25 we did a coastal walk along Byron Bay. Up some lovely hills to the Lighthouse which had great views. The walk ended up being about 6k, which was far according to the girls. Haha. We drove to Tweed heads and chilled on a grass area looking out at the sea whilst cooking couscous and billions of vegetables (because we thought we wouldn't be allowed to take fresh vegetables across the border into Queensland so decided to eat everything up for dinner). Dinner was great and then we treated ourselves to hot chocolate...delicious! It was 4pm by this time so we drove straight to Surfers Paradise and found a bush camp 30 minutes inland as every campsite was either full or the office was closed because it was ANZAC day. We set up camp and had some visitors tonight...possums! They were just wondering around us, it was crazy so we hid in the tent and watched a film all cosy in bed and went to sleep. I was a little annoyed that we weren't out partying on Anzac day but I'm sure there will be another time to party soon.