Monday 25th June – Exploring the Gold Coast

We had to check out at 10am, leaving us almost the entire day to drive the 45 minutes back to Gold Coast airport!  A perfect opportunity on a sunny day to explore this section of coast line that we hadn’t had time to see during our visit in January.

The view back to Byron from the Cape... and below the view on the other side of the Cape

 

Our weekend wheels parked in front of the lighthouse

Starting with a fleeting return visit to Byron Bay lighthouse, (mostly because we had no ‘real’ Aussie dollars to pay for parking!), we drove on to Brunswick Heads.  Huge expanses of golden sands with hardly another person around greeted us.  As a massive bonus, we gazed out to the horizon to see a few humpback whales migrating past. 

MORE golden sands at Brunswick Heads

Spot the whale?

On to Hastings Point and some more scenic coastal views before it was time to find a suitable lunch spot.   

Hastings Point views

I could handle living here.....

We found Cabarita beach (below) which seemed to be a surfer’s haven and got us dreaming about whether we might be able to afford to move here sometime, as we gawped through Estate Agency windows! (right) 

Cabarita Beach

I haven't seen an osprey for months!

We enjoyed hearing the parrots squawking as they flew past us and we spotted some more of the Aussie bird life that we love.

Wild turkey

And pelicans....

 

Our last stop of the day was to Fingal lighthouse (left), built in 1879, as the good weather we had been lucky enough to experience all weekend started to get blown away.

 

Auckland in the dark

Despite all of these stops, we were in plenty of time to return our hire car and get to the airport.  And, of course, that was before our flight was delayed AGAIN! Not ideal when Simon is back to work first thing in the morning.  Getting back to a very rainy Auckland we just about managed to find the car in the dark before pulling up at home about 1am.  A cracking weekend away from our first New Zealand winter.

Sunday 24th June – Kayaking with the dolphins

It was lucky that neither of us had to venture out for supplies this morning. We took it very easy. I don’t think I’ve drunk that much beer in one day for some time. Luckily, our kayaking tour didn’t commence until 130pm, so after a suitably slow morning we had time for a tasty fortifying brunch before it was time to don a wetsuit and head onto the ocean waves.

View along the beach to Cape Byron

We were shown some kayaking skills on the beach before venturing into the water

If I still wasn’t feeling awake, the face-full of breaking waves that we made it through as we left the beach certainly sorted me out!  A pitfall of being at the front of the kayak, along with the fact that you can’t always see how much effort your co-driver is putting into the enterprise, yes I mean you Simon Newman!  Having passed the breakers, the sea was the essence of calm and it was the perfect blue-sky day to be out kayaking.  One of our guides spotted the spout of a whale some distance out to sea and we made a concerted effort to make ground towards it, but we were never close enough for a decent view.  We headed out past Cape Byron and the lighthouse until we were officially the most easterly kayakers in the whole of Australia! 

Kayak selfie in front of the lighthouse

The guides turned us around and we felt the all too familiar feeling that we weren’t going to get to see any marine mammals after all. We would be offered a ‘rain check’, the chance to kayak again tomorrow, but Simon didn’t seem too keen on that. A relief for everyone then, when a pod of dolphins appeared nearby, and we got to watch them after all.

They hung about for a short while, then everyone was keen to try some kayak surfing into the beach. We were delayed heading in when Simon ‘the spotter’ Newman saw a turtle for us. Head up, out of the water at the surface. We got quite close before it dove out of sight.

I’m not sure if we definitely caught a wave or not but we found ourselves on the beach and not having had a swim, so I guess it was a success?!

We were supplied with hot drinks and Tim-Tams (famously good Aussie chocolate biscuits), but I was still feeling suitably warm from having been chasing distant whales.

It was a short walk back to our apartment to freshen up and relax after the fresh sea air.  You may have forgotten this by the time I post this, but it is currently the World Cup in Russia.  Tonight, is the England/Panama game and due to the time difference, it is on at 10pm here. The Sticky Wicket have reserved us a table (we must have been good customers last night!) and they persuaded us that we should get there about 7pm to witness one of the most important Aussie sporting events – The State of Origin Rugby League series.  This is a yearly best-of-three contest between the States of New South Wales (which we were in) and Queensland.  Played since 1982 fact fans, Queensland are the favourites having won all but one of the last twelve seasons! However, tonight was game two of the series, with NSW having won game one and having the home advantage as the match was being played in Sydney. Simon and I concentrated hard on trying to establish the difference in the rules between the rugby union we had been watching all weekend and rugby league. It was brutal. Against predictions, NSW stormed to victory, securing not only the match but the whole series.  No time for sitting back and enjoying the win. The channel was changed over straight away as England and Panama were about to kick off.

After last night we were not feeling a five-hour drinking and sport session in the pub. So we sat there nursing our drinks and trying to stay awake to watch the match. For a very pleasant change, tonight, being an England fan was not as painful as usual! Panama’s discipline was so terrible that they conceded a couple of penalties in no time and England managed to add to the tally, even in open play for once, making it 5-0 by Half-time! It was almost tempting to call it a night then, but it would have been a shame not to be able to bask in the glory of an easy second half for once.  Panama managed a goal and England got another dubious one. We were heading out the door as the full-time whistle blew at 6-1 to England.  Result!  Looking good for us making the knock-out stages comfortably.  That’s enough sport for one weekend I think!

Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd June - The Return to Oz

Friday 22^nd June – off to the Gold Coast!

As Simon had taken today off for our trip, it was the perfect opportunity to book a Bank appointment for me to be added to the joint account now that I’ve got my Visa (have I already mentioned that?!). So, a bit of admin in Pukekohe in the morning was followed by finishing our packing before driving up to Auckland airport.

We’d already been notified by Jetstar that our flight was due to be delayed by about an hour, but that kept creeping up until we were late by a whole two hours. I managed to notify our car hire company on the Gold Coast to stop us losing our chosen car and we wiled away the time playing cards and watching World Cup matches being replayed on screen in a bar.

Thanks to the time difference we got those two hours back on the flight, but it still meant that we arrived at our apartment at 9pm instead of 7pm as we’d hoped.  Plus, to our body clocks it felt like 11pm and we were too knackered to go out.

Saturday 23^rd June – Drinking day in Byron Bay

Si popped out for brekkie from a local café, bringing us back some pastries and coffee. We then wandered the very short distance into town to get some essentials for the apartment before we could freshen up and start the day for real with some browsing in the local surfie shops.

Good place for a lunchtime beer

We found a suitable seat in the sunshine at a seafront bar for a lunchtime snack and something to drink. It was about 1230pm by this time. 

We then caught the courtesy bus to Byron Bay Brewery for their FREE 2pm tour. It was hilarious. Like us, everyone was there for the free beer, which was generously splashed about from continually appearing jugs. The guy taking the tour just seemed to ramble. Firstly, about the history of the brewery, which was built on land that used to be a piggery, then onto famous bands that had played in the venue (The Ramones and the Rolling Stones, so worth a mention!). Then it was evident that maybe he’d had enough beer – the conversation disintegrated into how to make your own homebrew – a strange tactic on a brewery tour when you’d expect they’d be trying to convince you to buy lots of their patiently crafted produce?! 

 

You'd need a big house to fit this amount of brewing equipment for your homebrew!

It was a great beer garden kind of a day!

The tour kind of fizzled out after about an hour and people started leaving in dribs and drabs. We had struck up conversation with an American girl called Sarah, who was originally from Connecticut but has been living in China for six years before moving to Brisbane recently for teacher training.  As she was travelling alone and was only in Byron for tonight, we ended up inviting her back into town with us.   

We were already tipsy, so we continued drinking to stay ‘in the zone’, calling in first at the Great Northern to drink in the sunset on the balcony, before heading over the road to the Sticky Wicket sports bar to catch the rugby.  As a bonus, it was happy hour with cheap drinks and $1 wings between 5-7pm, so we made the most of that! 

Having enjoyed the All Blacks destroying France in the third test it would have been rude to leave when the Wallabies were playing next.  They had a close tie with Ireland but were eventually beaten. By this time, we had moved venue to the Railway where there was a band playing, but we were so into watching the rugby that we only heard them in the background.  The sport and the music finished by 10pm and we felt that a solid nine and a half-hour session was enough for us. Plus, Sarah had a 6am bus to catch the next morning, so we bid our farewells and headed home, a little the worse for wear.