Days 15-17, New South Wales (Byron Bay, Bangalow, Gold Coast, Nimbin and the Rainbow Temple)

The previous night, after the Koala Sanctuary, we left Queensland and headed towards Byron Bay, the surfer town in New South Wales.

The longest day…
When we woke up, I wanted to leave our hotel (mostly because everything smelled of urine for some reason) and head to Nimbin to spend the following night there. But our plans changed that night on what would probably be the longest day on the trip…
We went to the town on a lovely summer morning and had breakky at a nice little place near the beach called The Eatery where I had a deep fried pancake, which was delightfully artery clogging.The place was really cute, if you disregard the cockroaches, but hey, that’s Australia.
After breakfast we went to see a lighthouse, which is a thing you do in Australia and New Zealand all the time for some reason.

It was pretty cool, we got a tour of the place and went on our merry way, after learning a little bit about lighthouses, for example, they brought a special type of crystal glass to make the light produced by the lighthouse shine more brightly and other fun facts.


The Beach
Our next stop was the beach we saw from the lighthouse, just to take a quick look at it before we head on to the rainbow temple so we made our way back to the town and found the beach. It was really cool ,a lot of beautiful people playing around and having fun but the water was too cold








Rainbows and Hippies and Bears, Oh My!
A few months ago, we had a visit from a good friend of ours +Elad Ben-Israel who told Sivan about a place called The Rainbow Temple located somewhere between Byron Bay and Nimbin. This place is a sort of commune where people live on a kind of tree house and grow their own food and for some reason dig tunnels – Obviously, we had to see that. Getting there was not simple though… This is not really something you would find on TripAdvisor or Hotels.com so all we could do was follow a set of GPS coordinates sent to us by Elad. These coordinates took us up a dirt road that was eventually blocked. After turning around and finding an alternate route we arrived at a road in the middle of nowhere, which turned into a path in the middle of nowhere and eventually just to the middle of nowhere. We were about ready to give up when at the last moment, Sivan spotted an itty bitty rainbow sign that seemed to lead to something.

And so we arrived, unclear on exactly what to expect and more to the point, who do we talk to – it’s not like there’s a reception desk… We got to a wooden structure built on a tree and started saying hello to the people there (we didn't take any pictures, we already felt like fish out of water and felt that if we add a camera to the mix they will see us for the city yuppies we really are). The people were very nice but I definitely felt like fish out of water there. A nice girl called Gemma (I think) showed us around and informed us that there are no free beds available, we met another girl who was making some kind of art from the quills of a porcupine and we spoke for a while about how she got there and what she’s doing there, apparently, she’s been living there for a few years now except for a few months every year when she goes out and works. We said our goodbye (hugs) and continued to explore. The bathrooms were a little wooden structure with a hole in the bottom and a curtain that gives some illusion of privacy. We continued towards the inexplicable tunnels who we were told housed glowworms. We went in, looked around, saw some worms and Sivan said that that’s enough for her and wanted to get out, and so we did. when we emerged though we saw a cute little girl following an older kid of maybe 19 years. The little girl, who had a thick Australian accent which made it impossible for us to understand if her name was Aladdin or Ellody, immediately decided to show us around the place and she would not take no for an answer.

She showed us around the caves, way deeper than where we had gone in before (Sivan couldn't be afraid if the little girl was doing it) and we had emerged someplace else where we saw their vegetable gardens and chicken farms. Little Aladdin was trying to catch chickens for us but was actually kinda scared of them.

Get the Chicken!

After a long negotiation where we had to promise we’ll return soon, she was willing to let us go to our next destination of the day – Nimbin.
Nimbin and The Stoned Fish
Nimbin is known for being the capital of the Rainbow Region and a weird little town, it also has a reputation for being the cannabis capital of Australia so we thought we’d check it out, at least for it’s eccentricities.
On the way there, we were debating what does that mean: the cannabis capital of Australia, is it legal there? a short googling proved that it isn't and so we wondered – well how is it the cannabis capital? do you just drive up there and people offer to sell you marijuana?
That was exactly what happened to us, we arrived, got out of the car and some guys asked us if we wanted to buy weed. We declined politely and went on our way to explore the town.

The town really was a stoner’s paradise, with pot being sold everywhere, a nearby hospital (just in case I guess), and no police presence whatsoever (even though we did see a police station in our wanderings). Most of the hotels were situated on the main street with some hotels on the outskirts of town getting the higher marks on tripadvisor, however, they were fully booked and sivan was not too thrilled with the vibe of the town so we decided to sit down for a drink and some food and decide on what to do next.

The Storm of The Century
I’ll add at this point that as were walking about the city we noticed people looking up at the sky and heard mumbling about a storm coming but we paid it no mind, as we were planning to spend the night there so driving shouldn't be a problem.
Which is a good thing because the drive from Byron was an unpleasant affair through a forest and up and down hills on a fairly deserted road. Not an inviting prospect when the sun is up and the weather is nice.
And so as we were sitting in the restaurant waiting for the world’s slowest chef to make the world’s slowest pizza, we went online to look for accommodations outside of the city and didn't really notice how gray the sky was getting until we raised our heads to the sound of the world’s loudest thunder. “It’s coming alright…” we heard people say as we went back to our searches. We failed to find accommodations and decided to go back to Byron and try our luck there. By we I mean Sivan decided and I was saying that we’re probably gonna die.

The Drive
And so we took our pizza to go and went on a drive that on average between the two of us, our expectation to get of alive was 50%. The drive really was scary, the skies lit up like times square every few seconds, the road was dark outside of that and there was nobody on it except for us. Earlier that day, we stopped at a lookout point on a cliff, on the way back, we saw that some people gave up on the drive and pitched a tent there. A strange decision, as they were positioned on a dangerous turn, between the road and a 100 foot drop, but as we continued our drive, we started to understand the motivation…

The drive was insane, with stops every once in a while to think about how we want to manouver around the fallen branch that’s blocking the road, but we eventually made it to safety, in the form of Bangalow. Bangalow is a town just before Byron Bay, where we stopped to re-group and find a place to spend the night, a task that proved to be harder than first expected…
Our online search turned up no viable results and we decided to drive around until we find a place to stay, and we eventually saw a small sign on the sign of the road saying “vacancy” so we drove in and after a short while found a person to talk to who told us the price - a little over a double of what we usually pay. She told us we might have some luck in Byron bay if we just drive on the main road but if we can’t find anything, we can come back. After another 30 minutes of “No Vacancy” signs, and “You should try that place, they might have rooms” we gave up and went back to the house in Bangalow.

Clever Girl…
The place was really amazing, it’s sort of a converted mansion, complete with a back yard that has a stream going through it, a truly beautiful setting. Of course after our long day, all we wanted to do is shower and sleep, but as I was unpacking, I heard a sharp scream from the bathroom followed by a half naked sivan running into the room, closing the door and quietly stating: “there’s a spider in there”. Now, I really don’t have a problem with spiders, after all they eat mosqitos and the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but that specific sprider was a good example of why Australia is scary. It was gigantic, easily the diamter of a CD, and it was smart, it knew where to hide and when to attack. It was a mighty battle, I remeber at some point, a scene from Jurassic park came to mind when it seemed like all hope was lost and that I was gonna die in that bathroom: “Clever girl” I remember thinking, but I eventually emerged victorious from the bathroom and left Sivan to take care of the corpse.

What’s Next for the Puks
We really liked the place and decided to take it easy and relax after the long day we had yesterday and sleep there for another night. We spent the day in the mansion, eating breakfast on the deck outside and looking at some menacing salamanders. We also took the time to plan our next few days, we knew that we wanted to stop at gold coast to go to a water park but we needed to decide how to do Fraser Island , and we spent this day doing the research and vegging out.


Wet’n’Wild
Sivan really likes water parks. A few years back we went with a bunch of our friends to a water park in New York and we really had a blast (even though it was raining for some part of the day) so on this trip we checked – what are some of the world’s best water parks and will we be close to any of them. Turns out, that Wet’N’Wild gold coast is one of the top 10 water parks in the world so we couldn’t really not go there, could we?
We packed everything up and left our mansion and off we went back towards brisbane with a stop on the gold coast to go to the park. The first thing we noticed as we came in was how big it was. As experienced theme park goers (we’ve been to both Disneyland and World in our US trip (you can read about it on this blog as well!) and we knew the drill: Go to the visitor center, get a map, plot a course that will get you to all the good attractions and see what you can do about the lines (Line saving options). But when I tried to explain it to the person in the gift shop in the hopes that she will send me to the visitor center, she was not impressed and instead pointed at a map on a wall and suggested I look at that.

The Dark Wet Death
The map sucked but we did our best to try and make some kind of plan with the highlight being a slide (if you can call it that) where you are put in a tube, completely upright and then the doors close, an alarm goes off and the floor opens up underneath you to drop you to what you can only imagine to be your dark wet death. It was the most scray water slide I had ever been on, but it was amazing! There were other attractions, like a half pipe on a tube that makes you feel like you are about to fall off the pipe (but you don’t) and some dark slides where you don’t know what’s coming up (meh, not too scary) and of course the slides with the close to 90 degrees angles where your body leaves the slide for a certain part of the way down and you’re basically free falling, but we’ve seen all of that before. We never experienced anything quite like the tube of death (I don’t remember the actual name…)

We left the park a bit early since a thunderstorm started and the shut down the park so people won’t get hit by lightnings, I though it would add to the excitment, but I guess they didn’t see it that way… We drove back to Brisbane where we retuned our car and spent the night at an awesome place called Meriton suites.


In the evening we walked to a restaurant to get a steak and found a very cool, vibrant side of Brisbane that we didn’t get a chance to see on our first time aroud. Street performed doing live music shows in front of bars and coffee shops and a generally good atmosphere – we were pleasently surprised and decided that after Fraser Island, we will spend some time in Brisbane and explore it. The steak was really good! Awesome kobe beef chunk – but super expensive. We enjoyed a nice meal and a bottle of wine and came back to get a good night sleep. We would need to wake up at 6am the following morning to go to Fraser Island.


Till next time…