Driving Up the Coast

I had planned for weeks to rent a car to drive up the eastern coast. It cost about $300 for a rental car, so I thought it would be a good idea to find people to ride with us. I created a little flier and posted it in a few of the popular hostels. It said "Need a ride to Byron Bay/Surfer's Paradise/Brisbane?" along with my contact info and a few other details on the dates.  By the next day I already received 10 calls or texts, all from females. Why there were no males interested, I have no idea. If you ever get lonely in Sydney, just rent a car for the weekend and start posting fliers in hostels – you’ll make friends really quickly.

The first people to call me were Germans Melanie and Britta, who needed to get to Brisbane on the same day that we were flying to Hamilton Island. Brian and I went to meet them for a quick drink to make sure we got along (and they wanted to be sure we weren't weirdos). They agreed to pay $75 each which covered about half of the cost of the car excluding gas.  It was a deal for them since bus trips up the coast are really expensive.

We left Sydney early on Monday morning and headed north. We passed through Port Macquarie for lunch and made it to our goal of Byron Bay after about 12 hours. Byron is less than 500 miles from Sydney but there are not true interstates in between. We went through a lot of towns and two lane highways along the way. It was kind of nice because we got to see more scenery which included a random water tank with ‘Kentucky’ painted on the side and some wild kangaroos.

Coincidentally, Krista had already planned a trip up that way with her brother and flew into Gold Coast a few days ahead of us. She drove down to spend the next few days surfing with us instead of playing golf with her brother. We stayed at a popular hostel in Byron Bay called Aquarius. It was only $38 per night and was within walking distance to the bars. I read a lot of reviews that spoke poorly of it, saying there were bed bugs (sometimes a huge problem with backpacker hostels), but we had no issues.

The waves at Byron Bay

Byron Bay is famous around the world for its world class waves. It’s a cool, relaxed beach town that is centered on one thing – surfing. When we rented our boards from a corner shop, the cashier told us that Jack Johnson had stopped in a few weeks before (he owns a house in Byron). On a side note, I learned that Johnson almost became a pro surfer before he was injured while surfing Hawaii’s famous Pipeline wave. He lost a few teeth and had to get stitches, then switched to music.

The nightlife in Byron Bay reminded me or Cairns. The city was laid out in a less touristy way (if that even makes sense), with all of the bars and restaurants concentrated in a 3 or 4 block area. We didn’t stay out too late because we wanted to be fresh and ready to surf in the morning.

We took some steps down a hill to the beach to find it fairly empty compared to Sydney. The entire beach stretched for about 2 miles with the best surf on the south end at ‘The Pass’. We hopped on our boards and were immediately slammed with the strongest rip current I have ever experienced. Within 5 minutes I was about 50 meters out in the water behind the break, which is great. But the current also pulled me 200 meters down the beach where no good waves were breaking. I lost sight of Krista, but she was after bigger waves anyway. I tried to paddle against the rip and even hopped off my board, letting it drag behind me as I swam – no luck. I finally gave up and paddled back to shore. From that point on I stayed in the relatively shallow water and only caught the small waves. Even then, the current was so strong that you could barely walk against it.

After we were exhausted from fighting the waves, we drove up to a lighthouse and lookout nearby that claimed to be the easterly most point in the country. Next we packed up the car and drove to Surfer’s Paradise.