Roaming in Byron Bay
The US poet Tamsin Smith wrote after visiting Byron Bay:
"Like an antipodean, "true north' Byron Bay resets the compass, pointing us back towards our better selves ... we quite simply see and feel the beauty around us".
The first slide show is about Byron Bay streets, candle making at the market for the kids, tandem riding, surfing, seascape photographic attempts, and sunsets.
Byron Bay
Seachangers, treechangers, corporate-burnouts, babyboomers, artists, lifestyle junkies, shortboarders, longboarders, body boarders, goatboarders, neo-hippies, post-hippy-hippies, a sanctuary for emotional refugees, a black hole dreamland for party-heads, a time-quake for surfers, an elusive gold mine for property developers, a hot scene for backpackers ... a magnetic field.
The place is still bearing the impact of the Aquarius Festival in Nimbim in the 70s and the hippies that never left. Now, they all say the place has been ruined, rental prices have escalated ... it is still for me one of the best place I have ever been: people's spirit is there 'environmentally driven' by the sheer beauty of the place... and my children love it ...
The second slide-show is about Nimbin ... the place which inspired Byron Bay,
you will understand straight away... 'not everyone's cup of tea' for sure,
and not without 'a darker side'
(you can see video cameras in the main street, quite an extreme security measure for NSW)
The area is home to the Nightcap National Park, with tree ferns and ancient rainforests growing on fertile volcanic soil. The park was given World Heritage status in 1989.
It is also known for the fierce protests which took place between environmentalists and tree loggers in recent history. We visited the spectacular Protestors' Falls where I experimented with my camera lenses - see below.
More traditionally, Nimbin's surrounding is a bountiful countryside - always makes me think of teletubbies' rolling greens meadows.
If you have one more minute on this page, let me share something I read while on holiday in Byron Bay, from Tamsin Smith
(I just loved it)
"For me, writing is an cat of discovery akin to traveling - and so, when I have the luxury of time, I wander with words. I may not set out a specific destination in mind, but this random patterning of thoughts tends to lead me closer to what I need to see. I wonder if we all don't have a chest full of mysterious maps inside of us, each waiting to be unscrolled, when the time is right.
Do you think you have opened all the maps within you yet? There are plenty of manufactured charts out there that try to tell us how to see the world. I suspect you have grown tired of following these off-the-shelf instructionals.
Dare I begin with a disgression ? In my experience, it is the off-road ramble that usually becomes the unexpected high point of any journey. Thus, I roam".
