Byron Bay. Where reprobates from around the world flock to smoke as many spliffs, munch as many mushrooms and live the lives of people way before their time. It's hard not to like Byron Bay. As soon as you arrive you feel at home except your home doesn't have quite as much tie dye or smell of inscent sticks 24/7.
We were staying at the Arts Factory which is pretty infamous in Byron for it's relaxed attitude and fondness for parties. The Factory was a hippy commune in the 70s which later became a music venue in the 80s and 90s before settling in as a hostel. It sits a bit out of town in a swamp land/forest and it's easy to imagine all those hippies many years ago living a pretty happy existence there. The main part of the hostel is open plan with no doors or partitions blocking your way to the outside. In the courtyard you have many chill out areas, hammocks and pathways leading around and between the swamp lake and forest campground. Water Dragons are everywhere basking in the sun and weird giant turkey like birds run around continually foraging for food. When you're sitting swinging in a hammock taking in your surroundings you feel completely content and can quite understand how so many people get sucked in to never leaving this place. Then you hear one of the many annoying American or British people that seem to congregate there like an Ibiza club 18-30 posse and you quickly feel like escaping to the pub.
But yeah Arts Factory aside Byron is a pretty nice place to spend some time. You have the main beach pretty much right in the centre of town and point breaks along the coast as well as more spots in nearby towns/places. The town itself is pretty mellow and you can walk or skate around just taking your surroundings in without feeling swamped by people or tourists. It's only really when the Greyhound bus appears and offloads all the backpackers or when everybody heads in to the crappy nightclubs do you feel the massive presence of tourism. We were tourists ourselves of course but a lot of the tourists who came to Byron had a different agenda to us.
On one day we knew the surf would be pomp in Byron so we missioned it through to Coolangatta to watch the Quiky Pro Finals which was just epic. To see the world's top surfers shred at Snapper Rock was just surreal and the blazing weather only made it all the much better. Coola's only an hour or so away from Byron but it was amazing to see how much better the surf was there, we were pretty gutted we didn't take our boards and left swearing to return one day.
Like many places in the world we've visited, we were sad to leave Byron. If it had mountains near by I would move there in an instance but I'm not sure if the constant stream of (mainly British) tourists would become annoying after a while. Either way we'll be gutted if we never go back so it's been added to our quickly growing list of places to return to in the future. Next was Surfers Paradise which we'd heard was a total dump but we decided we might as well see it while it was so close.
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