The JaYmes Escape

“It’s arctic out there isn’t it”, said the man in the shop this morning as I bought a new umbrella. In Sydney anything below about 15 degrees seems to be considered ‘freezing’ so I suppose 10 would be ‘arctic’. “Ooh yes”, I politely responded, remembering to myself the subzero snow and ice of Russia and Finland 18 months ago, not to mention a lifetime of English winters. So much for ‘whinging Poms’.

I last bought an umbrella eleven months ago on my first day in Sydney, when after months of drought torrential rain drowned the city. No such luck for me this year; that same umbrella caught the wind and bit the dust on a rainy day last week.

The distinct arrival of winter is a reminder that my time in this country is almost over. If I’m still here in another month I’ll probably get locked up in one of those scary looking immigration centres and what with that and the weather, heading north seems like an all-round good idea. The long journey home is going to start with a visit to Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the outback. Then it’ll be on to Darwin up on the north coast where I’ll fly to Singapore.

Pictures from last month’s trip to Byron Bay and Brisbane are waiting for you in the gallery along with some other bits in the New South Wales album.

The sound of a didgeridoo echoes down the street; a group of bongo players accompany the sunset on the beach. In a nearby pub a guitar band starts to play.

At the palm tree shaded bus stop another coach pulls in; backpacks are pulled off, others are loaded on. Hostel reps crowd around the new arrivals, “do you have somewhere to stay?… yes they’re over there… hey Jim, these two are yours… what about you guys? yes yes, we have a pool”.

Byron Bay; the standard backpacker trail starts in Sydney and the next stop is here, about 12 hours by road up the coast at Australia’s most easterly point; and near the border between NSW and Queensland . Byron Bay is probably best appreciated in contrast with Surfers Paradise and the other Gold Coast resorts to the north, where no-one considered the implications of building skyscrapers behind an East facing coast (much of the pristine beach falls into shadow in the late afternoon sun). Still; the Gold Coast could be described as the ‘Costa Del Oz’ – it’s as much about nightlife as it is about sand and sea.