Sydney to Byron Bay

Getting to a computer hasn't been particularly easy over the past couple of weeks as after I picked up my car in Sydney I immediately made my way north up the East coast. Driving over the harbour bridge to get out of Sydney was a little surreal and my first stop was one of its suburbs Manly. The essential and final piece of aparatus for my trip was to finally purchase myself a surfboard. Over the next couple of days I spent my time trying to find the best craft, for the best deal. I finally decided to go for a 7'0 thruster from a local shaper and was set. Spent most of my time in Manly testing out my new craft or watching my favorite sport in the world. If fact I have spent most of my time out in the water since then. Whilst in Manly, I also heard from a Canadian friend Dale (ha, ha) who was travelling at the exact same time as me and after meeting for a few beers in the pub we decided to travel up the coast together, and still are. Its ideal as we are into all the same stuff (music, playing guitar, plus we both have tickets to the Byron Bay Bluesfest over Easter) and have the exact same plans, or so its seems at the moment. So as he got his stuff together and sorted some stuff in Sydney out I took the trip up to the Northern Beaches stretch of coastline staying in Collaroy for a few days. The Northern Beaches area consists of Manly to the south, Avalon in the middle and Palm Beach to the North. Palm Beach is where the soap Home and Away is filmed and I got the obligatory photo outside the "Summer Bay Surf Club". Unfortunately there were no sightings of Martha whilst I was there!! We also made the extremely vertical and sketchy climb upto the Barrenjoey lighthouse there just before dusk and ended up making the decent in complete darkness. I was just waiting for one of us to fall and break our leg.

The next day we set off from Colloroy on our 1000km road trip to Byron Bay. We stopped briefly at the legendary surf spot Narrabean, but there were no waves! The plan was to get up to Byron a week before the festival to check the place out, chill out and go surfing. Then as soon as the festival had finished we could blast our way up to Brisbane and get jobs. At this point my money was running dangerously low, the car had all but finished off any cash I did have. The ideal situation was to get a job immediately, but with the festival in the way this wasn't possible. I asked in every surf shop I came across but due to the time of the year (coming into Autumn/Winter) business was quiet for them too. Our first stop on the way up the East Coast was Newcastle. Original home to the band Silverchair; Newcastle was an unbelievably quiet town. We were there on a Friday night/Saturday morning and the streets just seemed to be constantly deserted. That night we went to the Cambridge Hotel to see some live bands. The Cambridge is also where Silverchair started out playing and as both of us are big fans we had to go and check it out. The headline band that night were called "Faker", weren't the greatest live band ever witnessed but the place was carnage - some guy crowd surfing got carried off on a stretcher! Rock and Roll. Next morning after a surf we set off for our next destination, the aim was to be in Port Macquarie by the early evening. However, en route we decided to stop via the Hunter Valley wine region, west of Newcastle and ended up sampling the wineries and breweries had to offer which meant that we didn't make it to our intended destination! Blasting up the freeway it was actually a bigger distance to drive than we had anticipated and three quarters of the way to Port Macquarie and pushing 8pm at night we realised that we weren't going to make it, so referred to the trusty Lonely Planet to offer a halfway house. We decided upon a place called the Wingham Hotel in Wingham which was described as a "traditional Australian hotel for a reasonable price". When we arrived at this deserted small town which was in the middle of nowhere and walked into the bar, every person there stopped and stared at us as we enquired about the accommodation. We had walked into a yokal/red neck pub, totally out of place, in a town which tourists by-pass on their way to the attractions and resorts. The room was like something out of the Victorian times or a horror movie, but it would do the job for the night. When we went out to grab some dinner the only place open at 9pm on a Saturday night was the local "Chinese" (I use this term loosely) restaurant. The chicken chow mein was delivered to us with uncooked noodles and was like nothing I have ever previously witnessed in a public restaurant . The fact that we were still standing the next morning as we checked out by just leaving the key in the door was a definite victory. There was no time for celebrations however as we had to push on to Port Macquarie and after being throughly unimpressed by what it had to offer we went for a surf for a bit at Callows beach there. We also caught the sunset there and I got a couple of nice shots. Here - and here.

The next morning we kept rolling onto towards Coffs Harbour, but stopped to spend the day en route at Crescent Head a nice little surf town with a very good righthand point break I had heard about. When we pulled up the surf was pumping, it was 32 degrees and perfect sunshine - I couldn't get out quick enough. However, the day took a very quick turn for the worst. After I had paddled out past the breaking waves I realised there was a crazy current going on. It wasn't a rip taking you out to sea but it was impossible to stay in the right position. I got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, got taken about 500 meters over to the side of where everyone was where there were a whole bunch of massive (like 6 foot) waves breaking over extremely deep water. I couldn't even entertain catching them and the current was stopping me from paddling to the side or back in. I was stranded out in the middle of the ocean with all these waves crashing right on top of my head. Not wanting to go over the experience again, I soon got tired out, couldn't duck dive under them due to their size and had to bail my board each time, dive really deep to try and avoid them. When I wanted to come back up for air I was still underwater, getting chucked about in a massive washing machine. At one point I thought that my time was up, I was going to die - seriously!! Eventually, I got past the breaking waves and used the massive whitewaters to bring me to shore. When I did finally get to the beach I puked twice and collapsed on my board. Later than day, we saw guys actually towing into those waves with jet ski's! Thats how big they were. I now look at it as a positive lesson and have been told by other surfers since that you get days like that when you are still learning, but that night I was in bad shape after just 2 beers. So, one near death experience later and we were on our way to Coffs Harbour arriving early evening. We stayed next to the "Hoey Moey" pub which was another red neck pub complete with locals chasing a wild possum round the bar. That night we also met an American couple, Adam and Tegra, from Seattle and had a great long winded debate about 21st century music, film and art. They too were into everything we liked as well and we were to see them again soon in Byron. Next morning we looked round Coffs Harbour, which is just another fishing town up the coast. Then stopped at the Big Banana and then the Big Prawn, before making the final leg of the journey up to Byron Bay.