Friday 14th March

A semi-lazy day today as we both woke up late and I had a headache. The laundry needed to be done and the facilities here are good, so that was a must but I didn’t get going until 11.30am. Because there are quite a few things we want to do in this area, we tried to get an extra night, but the park is booked for the weekend. Tom tried several other places in the area but all were full or wanted 3 or more nights booking. In the end we went to the Tourist office and they found a motel just up the road, so we went to check it out and booked for Sat night as it’s very good - it even has a swimming pool. (I didn’t go to the main one across the road today, partly because of my headache and partly because it was full of groups of schoolkids doing noisy organised events.) So I may get my swim tomorrow instead. On the way back, we passed an old van which is used as an advert for a local hotel. We had noticed it when we first arrived, and can’t help thinking that back home it would have been long ago vandalised or covered in graffiti. But here, it just sits there with the grass growing under it.

Anyway, back to today. After booking the new motel, we drove to Shelly’s beach, on Shelly Beach Road where we had read that the café (Shelly’s on the Beach) was excellent – it was. We had a lovely lunch, which we shared with a family of three lizards! They were quite unperturbed by people, especially the largest one who came so close to Tom’s hand to take a piece of meat. He/she was at least 30” long and the little one was about 12”. We took lots of photos and video of the family. While we ate, we watched 3 surfers surfing just off the beach, but I still haven’t seen anyone doing it well.

My headache having gone, we drove on up the coast road stopping at Pat Morton’s lookout at Lennox Head to take a few snaps of JABB, well 2 actually, as it looked out over a beach in each direction. We could see Cape Byron in the far north and Skennar’s Head to the south. The sea below is supposedly exceptional for the quality of the surf, with “world-famous right break”, whatever that means. There was a group of people having a surfing lesson in the bay immediately below the lookout, again nothing spectacular – I think I’ll just have to buy a surfing video!

Tom suggested we drive on up to Byron Bay as it’s only 20km from where we were so that’s what we did. At the bottom of Lighthouse Hill is a free car park, but you have to pay $7 to park at the lighthouse. Tom suggested that we park there and walk up to the hill. I looked at him. We drove to the lighthouse – protecting the most easterly point on the Australian mainland – nothing between there and the west coast of South America. It was really lovely there and the views were tremendous, particularly to the South, along Seven Mile Beach, which was almost deserted.We also had a yummy ice cream from In The Pink who have been voted one of the 10 best ice cream makers in Oz, I can quite believe it.

On our way home, a boy on a skateboard tried to commit suicide under our car – or that’s what it seemed like. We were driving along the main road, and this kid came at us from a very steep side-road. There was no time for Tom to react. The boy jumped off the board and he just managed to stop before running into the side of the car and the board went under the car and straight across the road. A scary moment.



Back in the cabin, we both had a snooze and it’s now 7.30pm, time to go out for a light dinner, since we had lunch – an unusual occurrence. Tom will do the photos when we get back later and I shall “speak” to you all tomorrow.