Byron Bay to Yamba

We checked out of our hotel in Brunswick Heads and headed down to Byron Bay.  While checking out, AM looked at the clock on the office wall and confirmed that the time on our watches was indeed wrong.  We started our drive down still pondering how we messed up the time.  AM decided to look into  our travel guide to see if there was any information on Australian time zones.  Turns out, Queensland does not participate in Daylight Savings Time.  So even though we only drove about an hour south from Brisbane, we had left Queensland and entered New South Wales and thus the time change.  Mystery solved.  Thank goodness we didn't have any flights to catch!

We reached Byron Bay pretty quickly and that was a good thing because we were both starving as usual.  The town center is very touristy but there were a lot of restaurants.  We chose one called, The Balcony, because it had outside seating.  The menu was pretty big, but we both ended up choosing the fruit plate.  AM added some toast and iced coffee and Bernard added fried eggs on toast and a regular coffee.

Brekky in Byron Bay

The fruit was really fresh and sweet and they gave us heaps of it.

We walked around town a bit after breakfast but were not too impressed because it was just all shops and backpackers.  We then drove down to Byron Bay beach and it was beautiful.  It was a little crowded but the water was crystal clear and warm.

Lovely Byron Bay

We waded across a little lagoon to a lookout and spent some time taking pictures and enjoying the scenery.

How're you going?

It started to rain a little and since we didn't feel like Byron Bay would be a good place to spend the night we headed down the road to see if we could find something a little quieter.  The towns of Yamba/Angourie were recommended by the guide book and known surf spots so we headed down there.

On the way down, we passed through Lennox Head.  Lennox Head was the first surfing reserve in Australia so we had to make a detour to check it out.  In keeping with Bernard's luck, it was a beautiful area but no surf.

Welcome to Lennox Head

See a pattern?

We left Lennox Head as it started to rain (again) and it pretty much rained on and off the entire way down to Yamba.

When we got to Yamba we found a hotel and got some local information from the owner.  She recommended a few places to eat and a couple of surf shops in town to get more information.  We ate at an outdoor deli and then walked around town.  We found one of the surf shops and chatted with the owner.  There was no one else in the shop so he was happy to talk.  As we were chatting about the local breaks, he casually mentioned that half the kids in the nearby caravan park were throwing up and a lot of locals had ear infections and other maladies.  Why?  Because all the recent rain and flooding contaminated the local river which flowed out to the ocean.  Hmmm, guess we aren't going to surf around here.

The shop owner told us we could drive to Angourie to see if the water was any cleaner down there.  Angourie was about 7km away so we took a drive down there to try our luck.  Angourie also happened to be a Surfing Reserve so that was promising.

When we got to Angourie, we could tell the water was very murky and not inviting at all.  To make things better, it started raining again!  And there were no waves, which is probably a good thing because Bernard was really surf-starved by now and would've risked Hepatitis for some waves.

We can see the end of this rainbow but there's not much going on there either :-(

AM says, “Australia is the only place you can get a sunburn while it's raining!”

Our plans for this portion of the trip are really being thrown for a loop.  We had anticipated to be in the sun and surf but instead we are faced with dirty water and rain and no surf.  We are not sure what to do now and are going to take it one day at a time.

Tomorrow we try our luck in Coffs Harbour.