Byron to Brisbane

Happy Sunday everyone! 

As we right this it's just before midday and we look out over the New South Wales (henceforth referred to as NSW for ease!) hills with a big blue skin and big smiles on our faces! It's 20+ degrees and we've got the day off so we finally have time to catch you all up. We realise it's been two weeks since our last blog and it's been busy to say the least, so lets start from the beginning shall we...

We left you just South of Byron, which we rolled into on that Friday. We say rolled, we actually dragged Bruce up the surprisingly, steep slope to the lighthouse before grabbing some lunch. We then headed inland to the hippy enclave of Nimbin, where we made our first Australian friends! Tim and Olivia live in Brisbane and were staying in the same hostel as us, but we met them in central Nimbin at the Friday night drum circle. that's right, we said Friday night drum circle and they turned out to be so much fun we spent the majority of the weekend with them. Tim is a Queenslander through and through who had been travelling in the UK and Ireland, where he met Liv and 9 years later they met us. They were loads of fun and when we said we were heading to Brisbane they invited us to a BBQ at their house the following weekend. We also had chance to meet up with (the former) Mrs Patricia Mulder, Rhiannon's old eurythmy teacher from school. We had a lovely cup of tea and realised how special it was to catch up with friends so far away from everything you knew together and see a familiar face again.

The following week we rolled our way into Brisbane, the River City! We spent a couple of days getting to grips with the city and doing some job hunting, before Alex's 30th birthday came around. After a pancake breakfast, we headed to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary on the edge of the city where we had an awesome day seeing some strange beasties for the first time in the flesh such as Tasmanian Devils, Platypuses (Platypi?), Wombats and most impressively the intimidating Cassowary! Of course there were Koalas galore, including Gandalf who we got to stroke (a sentence I never thought I would say - Alex), and kangaroos to feed. We followed this up with a night in Brisbane, including a beautiful meal in the trendy South Bank area of the city (thank you mamma and papa Stackhouse... It was delicious and Alex had the best calamari he's ever eaten!)

That weekend we turned up at Tim and Liv's, and met their dog, Harvey, a beautiful Staffy with a heart of gold. We had unfortunately double booked as for Alex's birthday we had tickets for the rugby in central Brisbane, where the British and Irish Lions were taking on the Queensland Reds team (come on you mighty Lions!) Our hosts were of course fine with this and explained what bus and train combo to take to get into town. What followed was a a two and a half journey of replacement buses and frantic running, which made us realise why everyone drives everywhere in Australia and resulted in us missing the first 25 minutes of the match. However we did get to see our first ever live rugby games, our team won and we didn't miss their winning try! Thankfully the next day we chilled out with Tim, Liv and Harvey, drinking beer and enjoying a proper Aussie barbie!

On the Monday we had another barbie to attend, this time with Naomi, a friend of Rhiannon's from when she worked at Lush. Unfortunately due to torrential rain there was no barbie, but we got to enjoy Naomi and her husband Darren's great company and beautiful home, as well as try our first Morton Bay Bugs! They look like the love child of a lobster and the Predator but are just like eating massive prawns, check them out! It was kind of weird being so far away from the UK and discussing Derby for a good half an hour (they lived in Allestree for the Derby folk).

Our journey then took us slightly further south, out of Queensland and back into NSW as we had ourselves a Wwoofing placement booked at a macadamia and avocado farm. For those of you who might be thinking that a) we can't spell woofing and b) we aren't dogs anyway so why would be woofing the term stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms where Wwoofers as they are known work a few hours a day on the farm in exchange for food and board. A massive shout out to the most beautiful Ben and Lianne for introducing us to this wonderful possibility into our lives... You are absolutely right when you say it is a most rewarding way to spend some time! 

The first week of "farm life" has been quite eventful and deserves a blog post of its own... so watch this space...

X x x