Byron Bay got off to a really umpromising start! Being slightly disorganised and forgetting that millions of other people would be leaving Sydney at exactly the same time as me I hadn't booked my bus far enough in advance so ended up on the 9pm bus out of Port Macquarie, arriving at 4.15 the next morning! But I thought it wouldn't be too bad, I could arrive, wander down to the beach and watch the sun rise while I waited to check in... Wrong!

Although it's summer up here, it's also the wet season which meant we arrived at 4 in the morning to pouring rain and howling winds left over from the end of a cyclone. So, along with many other very grumpy backpackers, I spent the next 4 hours huddling in a bus shelter smelling of wee trying to keep warm and dry - not the best start! The first day was an absolute write-off with pouring rain all day which, in somewhere like Byron which is only set up for beachy things, is a really really bad thing! Even trips inland were out as the roads had all flooded so things were looking very very bleak! A group of us from my hostel went out to drown our sorrows which was good but really not enough to fill several days worth of ruined beach time!

Luckily, the next morning the sun came out and although it hasn't been as good as in Sydney with the odd bit of cloud and rain, it's been good enough to get in some sunbathing and wandering along the beach as well as some great nights out. Byron has a huge live music scene (probably due to all the aging hippies wandering around) so we went to see Amp Fiddler (a Detroit soul musician I'd never heard of but who is apparently very famous!) put on a fantastic concert and then tried to go to Sneaky Sound System (apparently the biggest group in Austrlia - again I hadn't heard of them!) but they were sold out so we were reduced to listening outside the door!

And so that was Byron... Now it's on to Brisbane, hoping that the weather will hold out for a few more weeks! I'm already having visions of all my hard-earned tan disappearing before I can even get back to England!