Beach to Bush, Part 2

This is Part 2 of 3 of Luke and my epic journey up the eastern coast of Australia. Continued from Part 1.

First, a few quick notes: I added geo-tagging to the pictures on the blog; you should be able to click the pin in the corner of the picture to get an interactive Google Maps popup with the exact location the picture was taken. Give it a shot and let me know if it works! Also, please pardon the picture overload in this installment. I wasn’t feeling all that selective this evening …and now onto the post!

After leaving Seal Rocks we set a course up the coast towards Byron Bay. It was slow traveling as we stopped at just about every beach we passed by. After the freezing cold night in the Mondeo, we decided to stop in at a KMart and buy more proper camping supplies. For less than $70, we bought a tent, two sleeping bags and a butane stove. Not a bad deal at all!

As night fell we passed by a forest fire right on the side of the highway. As we continued driving, we saw large plumes of smoke rising from farmland. Last I checked the fire danger was supposedly low, so we figured most of the fires were set intentionally. Regardless, we went to investigate and took a detour onto a side road that went through some farmland. Interestingly, mere minutes after we started watching one fire it went out, almost instantaneously. Another fire on a different section of land started up shortly after. Seeing the night sky ablaze is a pretty wild sight (Check out the short video clip after the break!).

We stopped for gas and did a bit of research on where we should stay that night. I came across a campground on the Beach in Bundjalung National Park, just a few miles south of where we were. We headed out, turning off of the highway onto dirt roads into the park. After 15km or so driving into the bush we came to the Black Rocks campground, setup our campsite, cooked some steak, potatoes, and baked beans for dinner and called it a night.

In the morning we cooked some breakfast and went out on the beach to explore. We didn’t know it at the time, but apparently this section of beach and ocean was used as recently as 3 months ago for live bombing exercises for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). (There’s an article on its decommissioning here). This might help explain some of the most interesting beach terrain I’ve ever come across; it was truly fascinating! Along the beach were really soft “rocks” that had been eroded away by sea water. They were super easy to carve into, even with just a finger, stick or rock, and we added our impression to the vast array of scrawlings along the beach.

After we finished exploring again, we hit the road up to Byron Bay. Byron Bay is a lot like what Boulder, Colorado would be if it was on the ocean. It was full of hippies and tourists. Fun I suppose, but a far cry from some of the gorgeous beaches we had been experiencing on our journey north. After spending an hour body boarding and tanning on the main beach at byron bay we went off to do a bit more exploring.

We drove down the road a bit into the Headland Reserve at Byron Cape, the Eastern-Most point in Australia. The beach and terrain here was far more impressive than Byron Bay, and we actually got to see a pack of wild bottlenose dolphins swimming in the Bay! It was a pretty amazing sight!

We made an executive decision to make it up into Queensland, to Surfer’s Paradise and Brisbane, and continued our journey up the coast (stopping to bodyboard and sightsee along the way).

We arrived in Surfer’s Paradise just as it was getting dark. I’m really not sure who gave it the name, because the beaches and waves were nothing spectacular (Certainly less impressive than the other beaches we’d visited), but Surfer’s Paradise was an interesting city in its own right. It felt a whole lot like Miami Beach, with a pinch of vegas thrown in for good measure… with surf shops everywhere. It was very built up, and very touristy, but definitely worth the visit. Perhaps as if to fit right in with the Surfer’s Paradise culture, we decided to eat dinner at McDonalds (“Maccers” to the Australian natives), a first for this trip. There was a rumor (which we pretty soundly disproved) that the McDonalds burgers in Australia tasted different, even better than the ones in the US. Perhaps their “Angus” burgers, but their standard fare tasted pretty much the same. And a note to anyone visiting McDonalds in OZ: You have to ask for ketchup (tomato sauce to most here..), and they’ll only give you 2 packets unless you ask for more! At least McDonalds has Heinz

We left Surfer’s Paradise and headed up further north to Brisbane, mostly because we wanted to be able to say we made it there. We got there pretty late (~8PM), and because it was a Sunday most of the shops had already shut down. There were a few 24 hour shops and restaurants in the pedestrian mall and a few clubs open late. After a few hours in the City snapping some pictures and checking out the sights, we headed back to the car to begin the return journey back to Sydney.

Little did we know our adventures were just beginning. More to come in the third, and final, installment tomorrow!