To New Zealand

Having spent the last few days in Byron Bay, Jordache and I leave today for Auckland, New Zealand while Kyle is staying in Byron for a few more days. We were plagued by constant rain nearly the entire time we were here, and after selling our car along with one of our tents, it was back to the three of us sleeping head-to-toe in our remaining three-man tent with not even a car roof to keep dry under. That being said, we really had no complaints about getting rid of the car so easily. After we sold it, one of the ladies working at our camp site said she was glad for us, as the week before a guy had left with no interested parties and had to settle for $17 from a friend. Some friend.

Jordache had listed the car online about a week before we got into Byron, and while we had a fair number of views, only one person contacted us. We had listed our 1994 Toyota Camry Wagon with over 270,000 kms for $2200, having paid $1800 for it, so we had room to drop our price. Mirthe, a German exchange student, contacted us and sounded very interested, so we set up a time for her to drive down from Brisbane to check out the car. She got a ride with her employer, an Olympic team physiotherapist, and they pulled up in a Mercedes SUV. Her employer was going to let her know what he thought of the car, as she had told us she knew nothing about vehicles. The physiotherapist naturally wasn't that impressed, given that his ride was approximately thirty times what the Camry was worth, but we eventually settled on $1750. We had decided earlier that we could have let the car go for as low as $1000, and seeing as no one else was interested, we thought it would be best not to be too greedy.

That night, while we had a few extra dollars in our pockets, the walk into town was no less long or wet, and we realized that we had dropped a few rungs on the traveler ladder back down to backpackers. The walk into Byron Bay from our camp site would take between 20-30 minutes depending on our level of committment to haste, but we also hitched rides in and out of the town depending on the time of day. On foot, Jordache would repeatedly pronounce that his body was not made for walking, and would usually trail glumly behind me and Kyle.

Byron Bay, the most easterly point of mainland Australia, is a small town of about 9,000 permanent residents but with the backpackers/tourists/transients (depending on your point of view) the population is around 15,000. We met quite a few fellow Canadians during our stay, and we were most vocal after the men's team took gold on Monday. Showing at noon on Sunday in Canada, it meant that the puck dropped at 7 AM Monday morning for us, and we groggily but faithfully pulled ourselves out of our tent and walked into the camp kitchen to watch the game. With only four channels, the game wasn't being shown, so we made our way into town thinking that we had probably missed it. Walking past an electronics store, I saw the game playing on a bank of TVs in the back so we quickly claimed a couch and watched the end of the third and overtime. After Crosby scored we burst off the couch, loudly interrupting the salesman explaining something about picture quality to a customer. Canadians were running down the street with bodies painted red and white and leaning out of cars on main street with flags from the windows, all yelling along with a nation on the other side of the world.

Surfing, a trip to the Byron Bay lighhouse, and a day trip to Nimbin filled our days in Byron and now Jordache and I are gone. The one thing we had wanted to do here in Byron that we didn't do was go cliff jumping at a quarry just outside of town. Jordache is still feeling the effects of his jump a couple of weeks ago, so he wasn't interested, and after Kyle and I heard that someone had just broken their back in a jump we decided that maybe we wouldn't do it either. Theo, if you're reading this, you're one crazy man. Making smart choices, this is it from Justin from Australia. On to New Zealand.