So we started our first real hitchhiking adventure in Australia. We were not equipped really professional, that’s to say we used a plastic bad as a sign and walked to the entry of the highway which was only a couple of hundred meter away from Joshua’s house. Believe it or not, it took as only 10 minutes before we were lucky and a family stopped and took us directly to Byron Bay. Funnily enough they just dropped of another hitchhiker at the train station nearby otherwise they wouldn’t have even seen us 🙂 Why does everybody say hitchhiking in Australia doesn’t work? After around an hour (that is to say two, because we changed again the time zone :-/ ) we arrived and were a bit shocked. It was Australia day, so the camping grounds were a bit expensive (which we kind of understand) but 66$ per night were a bit too expensive in our opinion. After a short internet research we fortunately found another campground for “only” 40$, which was just not directly next to the beach (but only 300m apart).
There we were in Byron Bay, a village with around 26,000 citizens but approximately 1,300,000 visitors a year and the habitat of hippies, marijuana and surfers. This mixture gave as the impression of rainbow coloured cottages, private weed gardens, organic grocery stores, surfboys and tourists. But (what a surprise) we were welcomed almost exclusively by tourists, including tourist offices, souvenir shops, backpackers, discotheques, hotels, holiday apartments and supermarkets (there is even an Aldi there). Someone told us later, that the town Nimbim further inland is the real paradise for Hippies, where drugs and weeds are even officially tolerated by the police. After this kind of disappointing experience we still had some hope to experience a huge party for Australia Day, but this day is celebrated very reserved there, that is to say either private parties, barbecues at the beach or disco until late in the night.
So we did our own thing, and decided to walk around the stunning coast around Byron Bay. We walked from our camp ground to Cape Byron, where one can walk around the coast to a light house and to the officially most eastern point of the Australian main land. Because the next day was supposed to be a really sunny day, we did a very relaxed day at the main beach, which is also a very good surf beach. The following day we continued our hitchhiking adventure to Coffs Harbour.