Head back to Sydney, Coff's Harbour and Byron Bay

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Not raining anymore

Spent a night in the local bar with the only 2 other backpackers in town - Antje(from Germany) and Patrick(from Ireland) - met the friendly landlord - Ben and Patrick playing pool and one time 7 balled the locals!
Then got the bus back to Sydney. Again, what a pleasure that was. This time the cretins at CountryLink closed the Dubbo->Sydney train line so we even had to get a bus for that part of the journey - something like 17 hours on a bus - nightmare - caught the thing at 4am and got to Sydney YHA at around 9pm. No dead cat this time either! Originally we wanted to go to Adelaide, but discovered the rip-off car companies wanted $500 just for a 1 day hire! one day I'll open a cheap car company in Broken Hill and bankrupt them all for that.

We then headed for Coff's Harbour and stayed there a few days - had another bbq! also did some wave jumping and Ben went on a 3.5hour whale watching boat ride - but didn't see any whales. Visited Muttonbird island (wrong season for Muttonbirds though) and played in a pool competition with some most funny northern character called Fletch who wore a full rugby kit at all times and called Ben "Big Ben".

Then went to Byron Bay and had another enjoyable time on the beach, at the lighthouse and in the bars. This time I actually managed to try out surfing! ah yes, clearly my forte in life - just need a few more hours of practice and I might be able to stand up without falling off after 2 seconds.
I also swam out to a shipwreck and borrowing some Irish bloke's mask I had a quick look at some of the numerous colourful fish down there!
Amazingly whilst at the lighthouse this time we did see a whale!! it was quite a way out to sea, but you could first see the water spurt out of his blowhole and then it moving in the water! quite an awesome sight!

By JamesReed on 29.05.04 @ 05:55 AM GMT