Day Eleven - July 17th, 2013
Byron Bay
Rain always sounds louder from the inside of a tent, so I awoke to what I thought to be a torrential downpour, but was in actual fact a light shower. We decided that as we hadn't been too impressed with Byron Bay so far, and the morning seemed to be brightening up, we would tackle our HUGE pile of laundry and hang it out to dry in the sun. Not having any money on us for the campsite laundry, we walked into town and had a good look around. Full of cafés, bars and restaurants (fantastic if you're on a budget slightly larger than ours...) and some cool little stores nestled amongst the standard large surf shop chains. We found an ATM and withdrew some cash, and walked back along the beach. It's totally picturesque, but it's just not working for us.
Back at the site we got the money changed into coins and carried our ridiculous load to the laundry. It filled my backpack and several other small bags. The only excuse I can find is that I wore all my clothes in the Mountains in an effort to keep warm, therefore leaving me with nothing clean.
We filled three machines, and took an unusual half hour just relaxing while the dirt was washed out of our lives.
I retired to the tent to read, but was disturbed three times by the brush turkeys trying to get in. I'll give them one thing, they're persistent. With the clothes clean, we took over the entire outside drying area (carefully concealing my knickers - there's something weird about just hanging them out for the world to see) and made a start on our day. Elly went for a long surf while I explored further down the beach on a nice run. I passed a man meditating in an impossible position high up on the rocks with only some burning incense for company. He gave me a cheery wave after I took his photo. I ran back to where Elly was surfing, and watched for a while. The sun was nice and hot - hopefully I'll have my tan back soon. Feeling ridiculously pale.
We were both hungry so finished up our leftovers before getting the bikes out for a ride to the Byron Cove Lighthouse (the most easterly point on mainland Australia). The views were spectacular and we had a good ride.
Elliot wants to try and find a bar showing State of Origin tonight (the deciding game) so we're off to scout it out - COME ON THE BLUES!