Merry Christmas!

Byron Bay is one of the very most attractive places on Australia’s east coast to spend your Christmas holidays in. For the same reason most of the hostels and camping sites are booked in advance, and Kirstine and I had to look for a place (to a reasonable price) outside the city. Apparently the local rugby team doesn’t use their field during the break and it is therefore used to camping. And old semi-crazy but very friendly man John is looking out for the place and we persuaded him to give us a discount. Since the place was almost empty and he grew so fond of us, he ended up treating us with pizza and champagne!

Funny how things turn out =)

Later that night a mate of John showed up, and it turned out that they play in a band. Their gear was set up, so I gave them a hand playing drums. Awesome!

On the 24th of December we met up with Camilla (our Danish friend, who also studied in Melbourne) some of her Danish friends + a bunch of Swedish people. We tried to make a traditional Scandinavian x-mas dinner as possible, this included browned potatoes, roedkaal but kangaroo steak! Before we went out to hit the closest club we played a present game with dice. Very hyggeligt!

I finally found the best way to spend the 25th of December: surfing! Never tried it before, but we had a lot of fun! The twins & Camilla rocked, they took same lessons prior and rented the boards.

John has a brother that owns horses and he let us go for a ride in the beautiful country before we left Byron Bay. Kirstine grew up riding so she’s very talented and tried to teach me a bit as well.

A great time at Byron bay! After that we moved on heading towards Coffs Harbour.

Countryside Australia

We took an extra night at Mt Warning campsite to relax after our climb and then we drove further down south to see some of the small towns in New South Wales (we ready crossed the boarder and left Queensland two days prior). The road twists through a beautiful landscape with small mountains and green fields with cattle.

After passing a million cows, we craved a big steak and went looking for a local diner, where we could get a good Sunday meal. No luck in the dull Kyogle so we continued to the cozy Lismore, which both provided us with a great steak and a good movie at the local cinema.

Grrr...

I like it nice and red!

We went to sleep at a deserted car park but the morning after (Monday the 22nd of December) we were woken by the load noises of last minute Christmas shopping. We joined everyone else, and spend a couple of hours apart (for once) to go on present hunt for each other. Lismore is a small, cute hippie town with heaps of nice cafés and interesting shops. After shopping we drove to back to the coast to spend the night in Ballina.

Wifey and me!

Mount Warning

We left surfer’s paradise looking forward to seeing something different than all the tourists and surfboards, so we decided to pay Mt Warning National Park a visit.
Though Mt Warning is not located at the most Easterly point in Oz, it still has an altitude that ensures that this is the very point where the sun hits Australia first. For this reason many people take the long and tough hike to experience sunrise at Mt Warning. And of course Kirstine and I wanted to do that as well!

The night we arrived at the campsite we met two young guys and their Dad, who by coincidence had planned to do the hike the very next morning. We decided to do it together, which definitely was an advantage, since they’d done it before. We met up 3am in the dark, and started the 4.4 km long hike up the mountain. It was amazing to walk in the dark rainforest only by the light of our torches, listening to all the exotic, unfamiliar noises.

We had to make a stop halfway up, because a snake was occupying our track, but we managed to chase it away. After a long struggle we reached the top, but unfortunately it was overcast and completely impossible to see anything than white clouds. A pity to miss the supposedly spectacular sunrise and amazing view, but despite that I really enjoyed the hike. Definitely one of the best hikes I’ve ever done!

After the two hours hike down again, we enjoyed water melon, coco pops and the company of the camp site dog!

Mmmm... Lovely day!