Gold Coast Friday 3/7/08

Bright sun and blue skies this morning. We continue to see record setting rains in all of the parts of Australia where we aren’t. In spite of our morning rains yesterday we continue to be extremely fortunate and here is one more.

After some fresh fruit for breakfast we take a walk up to the lighthouse at the point of the Yamba harbor and take a picture back across the public beach to our little block of lodging properties. There is an old fellow out trimming the grass along his driveway and we exchange morning pleasantries. He has an old, well-kept house with unbelievable views of the water and beaches and we think it is one of those properties that he has probably had for fifty years and might not be there much after he’s gone. We offer some suggestions on hospitality to our check-out person and she picks up speed to try to get us out of her face as soon as possible. With this location they might have a limitless supply of first time visitors so who cares about repeat business.

It is not much of a travel day today. Our first leg is about 70 miles north to Ballina where we find a parking spot and wander around the town center. There are a couple big Ramadas here along the water so some local must have grabbed a franchise. We have lunch at a sidewalk café and John has a spinach/ricotta ravioli with a garlic cream sauce and Mary has a smoked salmon and corn fritter stack. The fritters are exceptional with lots of corn, peppers, onions and a bit of breading topped with cream cheese and then the salmon. You never know where you will find some really good food and this may make up for Mary’s disappointment in last night’s dinner.
We stop at a few more beaches and overlooks as we continue along the ocean for our last 40 miles to Byron Bay. We have said this before, but how many perfect surf beaches and how many sweeping ocean views can you appreciate. We still love the water views that are consistently on our right, but we probably won't stop much more. Byron Bay, our stop for the weekend, is a larger version of Yamba, and if it weren't for the size would probably be the better candidate for Margaritaville. There is really a beach vibe here with tons of young folks, a film festival going on and a big time blues fest coming in a couple weeks. Whereas Yamba had a series of smaller beaches, Byron has a huge sweeping beach that must be a couple miles long.

We are in a small apartment in the middle of town so after checking in we walk a couple blocks to check out the beach and whatever might be in between. There are tons of folks on the beach with some unusual activity. There is a handwritten notice on the board, normally used for surf conditions, that tells us "snake in the area - very dangerous." There are a few steps down to the sand that gets you through some dune foliage and apparently that's where the critter is lurking. A crowd has formed to keep track of his progress as he slithers among the grasses and we get a peek as he passes by. He is probably six feet long and a couple inches in diameter and would clearly like to be somewhere else. The lifeguards are walking around with their radios trying to appear in control, but they want no part of the removal process. It all gets pretty boring after a while and the crowd drifts off and so do we.

There is a restaurant on the beach which we book for Saturday night and then go back into town for more exploration. It is late afternoon when we get back to our apartment for a break and the movie on TV is "Snakes on a Plane." In the evening we decide to go with a pizza and a bottle of our Hunter Valley wine in our room. A guy at a local shop tells us where to find the best pizza in town (he walks out to point out the way) and we order the Australian which has ground beef, ham, onions and egg. We grab a beer at the bar while we wait and chat with the bartender from Toronto. He is a local scuba instructor here and tries to get home each year for family and hockey and claims he still misses the old North Star days. He also points out a pretty blonde co-worker that is the other reason he stays here.

The pizza is good in a strange sort of way and the wine, that we specifically bought to have with a pizza, is terrific. There is live entertainment at every bar in town tonight and we decide to leave it to the others. What a surprise.

Today's local headline: Painful Brisbane Courier Mail (banks raise interest rates in excess of Aussie fed increase in defiance of Treasurer requests)