We decided to take a last minute trip to Queensland after we found out Stefan wouldn't be starting his job until April 12th, and Edith wouldn't (originally) be starting work until the 10th! So about a week and a half ago after Stefans nonchalant "We should go on a trip before work starts" morphed into us planning and booking tickets to fly to Queensland, rent a car, stay in 3 different locations (including one that Edith has wanted to stay at for over a year), find an amazing boat cruise and plan daily events for a week, all in less than 4 hours. We stayed in 3 places on our trip, Byron Bay, NSW, Kinka Beach, QLD, and Brisbane, QLD. We're splitting each place up into a separate blog post to give each the attention they deserve.
The trip was absolutely fantastic. We got a week of beautiful, beachy, summer weather (and as we spent most of the last Australia Summer in the US Winter, we were feeling a bit sunshine deprived), and got to see quite a bit of Queensland, but left us already imagining a trip solely devoted to going further North and doing a trip planned around islands in the Great Barrier Reef (and involving little to no driving).
We flew up to Brisbane on April 2 at the crack of dawn, and arrived in Brisbane before 10am. We quickly picked up our rental car and drove north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast to visit Stefan's grandparents, Maureen and Eddie. They were very sweet and welcoming, and hadn't seen Stefan for 12 years, so there was a lot of catching up to do! They made us a fantastic lunch of steak and salad and garlic bread and dessert, we were so full afterwards! Eddie and Stefan were reminiscing about Stefans amazing puzzle skills, which he showed off last time he stayed with them, and Eddie gave us a neat puzzle that we're working on right now. We stayed as long as we could, though of course it wasn't long enough. The picture on the right is of Stefan with Eddie and Maureen, and the the pictures below are of Maureen showing Edith some of her sewing projects, and Stefan, back in Melbourne, working on the puzzle Eddie gave us.
After we left their lovely house in the Sunshine Coast, we headed down to Byron Bay, which is 2 hours south of Brisbane and actually in New South Wales, not Queensland.
Byron Bay is right on the coast, and is a bit of a hippy town that attracts a LOT of tourists, especially backpackers and people traveling around Australia in camper vans. We stayed at the Arts Lodge, which is a neat hostel that we had read about in a book of short stories Kelley gave us last Christmas. It's a really neat quirky hostel a bit outside of town that has 2 teepees, dorms, tent cabins, and (as we found on our exploration mission of the grounds) a huge campground and vegetable garden. The grounds are extremely lush and built near a swamp/mini lake, and there are hammocks strung near the lake with plenty of people reading or napping. We stayed in one of the big teepees, which was really fun. The teepee was very centrally located, which made it a bit loud the first night, but on the second night gave us a great chance to listen to the Talent Show without braving the cold and the mozzies (mosquitos).
As we didn't get to Byron until almost 8pm, we didn't see anything outside the hostel on our first night in town. The next morning we woke up bright and early and headed straight out to a breakfast joint mentioned in our severely outdated, yet still helpful guidebook. The breaky place was called Byron Beach Cafe, and it has a great outdoor patio that overlooks the beach. It wasn't crowded at all when we were there, and we both had the fantastic breakfast special and a cup of excellent coffee. If you ever visit Byron I definitely recommend this place for a great breakfast away from a lot of the backpackers. Here are two pictures from their website, because I forgot to take some while we were there:
After breaky we made a short detour back into town to see all the shops and to check out Vinnies (we'd forgotten beach towels!), which is Australia's version of Goodwill or the Salvation Army. There we found not just beach towels ($3!), but also a great CD of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Mozart's Toy Symphony ($1!), and some dress pants that fit Stefan really well ($2!). With Stefan's height finding clothes in a thrift store rarely happens, and he just magically stumbled on this pair when he wasn't really looking. It was quite a find! After our short thrifting adventure we picked up some groceries for the next few lunches, and hit the beach. We stayed in the shade for much of the morning, and applied lots of sunscreen throughout the day. The water was absolutely amazing! Very comfortable temperature, although a bit shallow for swimming, Stefan had lots of fun playing in the waves.
After the beach we went back to the hostel to shower and change and get out of the sun for a bit by exploring the hostel and reading in the shade of the trees by the lake. Late afternoon we went back into town and walked around a bit, checking more of the area, and ending up grabbing a beer at a little bar called The Rails (it's right by the train station), and hung about there doing crossword puzzles. We went back to the hostel for dinner and turned in for an early night of reading in preparation for another early morning. From the teepee we could hear the Talent Show going on, which was actually really quite impressive. We even heard one song that ended up stuck in our heads for the rest of the week, that was sung by an indie/folk artist from Canada named Dan Mangan. The music video is below if you'd like to experience a bit of the sounds we heard our last night in Byron. We had a really fantastic time while in Byron Bay, although we were surprised at how commercial much of the downtown was, as we saw a lot of the same stores we have in Melbourne and Sydney, whereas we expected a bit more of an eclectic variety, though I guess Byron's reputation as a tourist destination has promoted big businesses to move in. Despite this we still had a really lovely stay, and would recommend our hostel for anyone looking for a unique place to stay while in Byron Bay.
