Our next stop was Byron Bay and I loved the place!!! The first place in Oz that I really loved! The town was very quaint and had a bit of a holiday feel about it, with lots of surfers shops and nice little cafe's around the place. The first day we just had a look around the town and went to the viewpoint on the beach to watch the sunset. I spent most of the time looking out for dolphins as we'd been told you could see lots from there. We didn't see any though.

We decided to give surfing another try after our unsuccessful attempt in Mooloolaba, This attempt didn't go much better! The waves were very similar to those in Mooloolaba but I think they were evn stronger! Within 5 minutes I'd been sucked under by a wave, lost control of the board which whacked me on the hip. The fins from the board kindly left a nice gauge in my wetsuit and also a hole in my hip! It was so painful! I think the bone was bruised more than much external damage but I decided surfing in Oz wasn't really for me after that! We'd hired the boards for 24 hours too so it was a bit of a waste of money! Having said that, I did give it one last attempt the next morning and it went much the same way again! 2 minutes in the sea and that really was it that time!!! Bring on surfing in Cornwall!!

The following ay we took a walk up to the lighthouse on top of the cliffs. It was about a 3 hour round walk and it was fantastic. When we got to the top, we looked out to sea and could see about 6 dolphins surfing the waves! They looked like they were having so much fun! We walked down closer to the sea and could see even more dolphins swimming around and having fun! They jumped out of the water and through the waves right next to us! Amazing! We were looking out for humpback whales too as their migration route goes right past the coast of Byron Bay. We didn't see any but someone said we'd just missed one half an hour before!

The last day we went to a cool market, it was bery hippy like. There were lots of food stalls and the weather was fantastic! Beth and me took to the water again that afternoon for a dive. We'd been told that the visibility wasn't too good but they decided to take us out anyway. There were quite a few other people going out too. We were a bit dubious about the visibility but it turned out to be a great dive! The boat we caught was diufferent to any we'd been on before. We had to push it out to sea and the waves were so strong! We only had a 5 minute boat ride out to some rocks and then we were in the water. It was such a fantastic dive! The visibility wasn't great but there was so much activity going on all around! I think because the tide was so strong! We saw rays and wobbygong sharks which were so cool! We also saw grey nurse sharks! About 2 foot away from us! They are proper scary looking sharks!! The tide was taking us towards them too which was quite scary!! They didn't seem to be too bothered about us though! We also swam through a cod hole which was just fantastic! We had to swim down to go through it but when we got inside it there were thousands of fish everywhere!!! It was amazing! Just silver flittering everywhere and fish everywhere in front of your face! I've never seen anything like it before!!

I did have a bit of a scary moment. My regulator started making really funny noises, like it was struggling to get air out of the tank! So I panicked a but and used a lot of air during that time! Specially swimming through the cod hole! Our dive master helped me swap to my spare regulator and I was much happier then! He told me after that I'd had an 'asthmatic regulator'!! Typical!! Still such an amazing dive though!! Oh, and also extremely cold!!