We arrived into the hippie town of Byron Bay passing many cafes, restaurants and shops. We were happy that we had organised to stay here for 3 nights as it looked pretty cool.

We were greeted by Carly, our hippie shuttle bus driver, who took us to the Arts Factory hostel where we had booked to stay for 3 nights. Carly likes to play her ukelele, is seriously chilled out (she is so laid back that she is almost horizontal) and wears no shoes. She is as hippie as you like!

The Arts Factory is tucked away, about a 10 minute walk into town. They had a free shuttle bus into town regularly (hence Carly), which we took advantage of on a few occassions. There were many hippy types chilling out here playing their music, juggling balls/sticks, doing yoga and hula hooping at the hostel! There were always things going on here making it an interesting stay. It was like Woodstock in the late 1960s/ early 1970s.........enter John Lennon!!!!!

Our first day was spent chilling on the beach and drinking in a popular beach bar beside the esplanade.

The following day we spent some time in a travel agent trying to book our trip from Broome to Darwin and then Darwin to Alice Springs with Adventure Tours (all places being in Australia). It wasn't until the travel agent rang the tour company to book it that we found out due to flooding parts of the trip were not running. This put a spanner in the works as we had already booked our flight from Sydney to Broome in anticipation of booking the trips!

After some careful planning (or perhaps not so careful planning as we didn't check the flooding situation), we decided to change our Virgin Blue flight. So instead of a flight from Sydney to Broome on 23 Nov we were now flying from Sydney to Nadi, Fiji on 24 Nov. We incurred a cancellation charge for doing this, but as this was the free flight we got when our flight from Adelaide to Perth was changed, we wern't complaining.

So we were now looking forward to a trip to Fiji in a week but still unsure what happens after. Watch this space...

After a lot of decision making, we spent the evening back at our hostel getting frustrated with the Wi-Fi as it kept going down. We still had nothing booked after Fiji. We gave up trying and decided to revisit the plan in a day or two.

We woke the next morning, which was our last full day in Byron Bay, knowing we were off to Nimbin. This really is a hippie town. We were met by the chilled out driver of a psychedelic bus painted in every colour of the rainbow. The retro coach also had kicking beats blaring from the speakers. It was clearly a low-key entrance!!!!

After a couple more pick-ups, we stopped off at the bottle shop to buy some alcohol for the tour. We purchased some beers and some ready mixed G&T drinks. Our mouths were a bit dry so we started drinking them.......then realised it was just before 11am!

Our first scenic stop was Whian Whian Waterfalls for 30 minutes. We put the beers on the damp soil while we sat on the rocks taking a few photos whilst getting bitten by mosquitoes. On the way back to the bus Mark was swinging a six-pack of beers back-and-forth but did not spot a tree stump. You guessed it, the bottles banged against the stump, the damp bottom of the case gave way and the bottles fell on the floor causing one to smash! We picked up the broken glass together with the remaining 4 beer bottles, which by now were covered in leaves, twigs, mud and everything else! Nice. We soon cleaned them off and were back on the bus drinking them.

After a 45 minute journey we were in Rous Water Rainforest Reserve. It was time for lunch. Whilst the tour guide cranked up the BBQ, the girls ventured off for a walk through the rainforest passing many birds and other native forest animals. The boys just sat chatting.

It was a pleasant walk to start with but, knowing we had BBQ food waiting, we couldn't get back quickly enough to tuck in before it was all gone. Our lunch consisted of sausages, beefburgers, salad and beers!

After lunch, we arrived in the hippie town of Nimbin. Our driver told us we had 1.5 hours here. Mark and I looked at each other thinking "that's not enough time". Unknown to us, 10 minutes was plenty! After a brief stroll down the main street, and a few photos, we spent the remaining time in a coffee shop! That says it all.

By way of background, Nimbin was where the 1973 Aquarius Festival launched Australia's hippie culture. It's in a 1970's time warp with a high drug community. It is a little weird as most people seemed to be a bit spaced out so we didn't hang around too long. To give you a sense, we were offered "cookies" twice within about 30 feet of walking on the main street. It was a really good day though.

We arrived back to Byron Bay at 6pm. We got showered and met up with Luise, a German girl we met from Rainbow Beach, and a new friend of hers that she met on Fraser Island, called Jenny.

The four of us had a great evening. We dined in a nice bistro followed by going to Cheeky Monkeys nightclub until 3am. We had gone into another club first of all but walked straight out when some Aussie lad who looked like he probably still had nappie rash started screaming "yeah, yeah" at the girls. A quick look around suggested that he was only mildly drunk compared to others who could barely speak. So, Cheeky Monkeys its was. We managed to celebrate Lisa's birthday here drinking beer and a glass of champagne and dancing the night away.

We got back to the room about 3:30am and slept like a log. Lisa forgot to take her phone off mute so the alarm didn't go off. It was just as well Mark woke up early otherwise we may have missed our 10am checkout deadline. Everything was thrown into the rucksacks and we were ready to go.

It was Thursday 18th November at 8am and knowing it was Lisa's birthday, Mark ordered bacon and egg toasted in turkish bread from the hostel cafe! It was so delicious, especially as we didn't get to bed until the early hours after night clubbing and were in need of something stodgy!

With our stomachs full, we got the free shuttle into town and were ready for our Greyhound bus to Coffs Harbour.