Byron Bay to Brisbane

We left Byron Bay as rain and festival goers descended for the weekend’s Splendour Music Festival. Where it had coasted, the town now bustled. Hundreds of excited arrivals sought out wellingtons and tarpaulin as tattoos, piercings and long hair mingled with lost faces and wild eyes. The smells of wet pavement, oil bus exhaust and body odour intermingled.

Our bus took us away from the frenzy, through a cleansing carwash of rain to cross the state border into Queensland and our destination Brisbane. Fortunately once we arrived the rain clouds dispersed and the sun reappeared to welcome us like an old friend. Walking from the bus station to our hostel the air was humid and the sun warm against our skin. We went down to t-shirts (Alex even broke out the shorts) and the hostel owner asked with surprise if we were cold. We laughed freely as whilst it might be winter, at 18 degrees it was positively summer compared to our experiences in New Zealand.

We returned into the city to explore what we could before moving on tomorrow (we plan to return for longer when we travel back to Sydney). We walked along the banks of the River Brisbane as ferries jetted back and forth and the locals docked their pleasure boats by the entrance to the city’s gardens. Through the tree shaded walkways the scent of orange drifted on the air. Mangroves sat in the shallows as the late afternoon stretched shadows and cast amber onto the water. Rounding the peninsula and returning into the city we past old colonial design, white verandas laced with dark green palm that gave way to fire forged brick and gothic churches on English street names, all echoing days of Empire.Read more