I caught the bus at 6:45 in the morning and on the way I saw some Kangeroos in a fields at the side of the road. They were in the distance but they were the first Kangeroos I had seen. I arrived in Byron Bay and there was a man holding a surf board that said YHA on it. He was my pick up. We walked two minutes down the road to my hostel. I checked in but the room wasnt ready yet so I just left my bags in the room and went to explore Byron Bay.

I headed towards the shops. I was on a slight mission, I wanted to buy a watch as mine broke 2 months ago and I had stupidly left my phone on the bus the day before so I had no way of telling the time. I also wanted some new ear rings as I had been walking around with only one in for about 3 weeks. I'm pleased to say my mission was sucessful. I bought a pair of silver ear rings with a square purple coloured diamond in for $12 and a silver watch with a white leather strap for $30. I wondered back to the hostel with my little bag of goodies. The room was ready now. There were 9 beds in the room, 4 bunk beds and a single bed. I chose the single bed so there would be no one above me. I set my watch and put it on and also put my new ear rings in.

I then went for a walk to the beach. It was very beautiful. golden sand and blue sea. I sat on the beach for about an hour watching the surfers and passers by. To the right there was a cliff with a lighthouse the top. The sun was out but it was windy as well making it a little chilly at times. I made my way back to the hostel and had a chilled out night there.

The next day I had a day tour booked to a hippy village called Nimbin. The brightly coloured bus picked me up at my hostel at 10am and went around picking up other people. A guy called Howard sat in front of me and we started chatting. The driver was called Jim and he played us some songs from the 70's as we went along. The first stop we made was at a pub. Here you could buy a beer for the journey and sample some of the free nuts as the road was lined with nut trees. Not liking either beer or nuts I did neither. It was still quite a long way to go so we had more tunes and storiesfrom Jim about previous trips. He explained to us what Nimbin would be like. He told us how all the locals sell marijuana and would offer it to us on the streets either to smoke or in cookies. The police here turn a blind eye to Nimbin but it is illegal. We arrived at 12:30 and Jim gave us an hour and a half to explore. Me and Howard decided to stick together, safety in numbers!

Everywhere in the village was in bright rainbow colours and the men all had long hair with bushy beards. Thw women had long flowing dresses. We walked up one side of the street and went in a few shops looking at the souvenirs and bright hippy clothing. As we walked down the street we did get asked a few times if we wanted anything to smoke. We just said no thankyou and kept walking. Feeling a bit hungry we went to a shop and bought a mars bar each. I was lucky as inside my wrapper it said Congratulations I had won a free mars bar. So I put the wrapper in a safe place for another time. We then crossed over to walk up the other side. This was the side where you were offered cookies, 3 for $15. The recommendation was to eat betwwen a half and more but definitely not more than one at once. Once again we said "no thankyou" and just looked in the shops. Lastly we went into a museum about how the hippys got there. It was a bit random, from the floor to the ceiling it was covered in bright random things and had lots of references to drugs. We then went back to the bus. Some other people on the bus had bought some stuff to smoke or some of the cookies.

We then drove through the beautiful countryside to a picnic site next to a dam. We explored the Dam whilst Jim cooked our lunch for us on the BBQ. It was a nice lunch. We got 2 sausages and a burger each. It really filled me up.Whilst we were eating it had started to rain so instead of going to a waterfall to swim we drove back through the national park. On the way we stopped as Jim had seen a Koala bear up a tree. We all got out to look. at the top of a very tall tree was a grey blob. That was the Koala. We also stopped to look at a waterfall before arriving back in Byron Bay at 6pm.

That evening was movie night in the hostel so at 8pm I went to the TV room but there was no sign of any movie coming on or the free popcorn. We ended up watching a bit of the Australian X Factor and the Simpsons. Just after 10pm I gave up and went to bed.