Mardi Grass

Once a year at the beginning of May Nimbin holds the Mardi Grass festival. This is a very special festival with lots of unusual events. Over the weekend the Hemp Olympics take place. These involve The Bong Throw and Yell competition - People throw the bong as far as they can whilst shouting out something they feel like shouting at the top of their voice, The Growers Ironperson Event - carrying a sack of fertilizer and buckets of water as fast as you can around an obstacle course which is your growing area, and Joint Rolling competitions. There were four joint rolling categories - Speed rolling, Speed rolling whilst blindfolded, Speed rolling in adverse conditions and Artistic rolling. The finals of the joint rolling events were held in the Town Hall and all the winners were presented with a medal. There was also a tug of war and an attempt at smoking the most joints in the same place at the same time. On the Sunday there was a cannabis law reform rally and parade led by the ganja fairies. This rally is not only held in Nimbin but in cities all over he world. Through the weekend various discussions were held in the Town Hall and in the evenings bands played on a stage in the main field. There was also a lot of very nice food which is of course extremely important at these sorts of events.

Macadamia Nuts

For just over two weeks I went to work on a macadamia nut and mango farm. Sadly they hadn't had any mangos at all this year due to too much rain (yes this is in Australia) but they did have plenty of nuts. I spent most of my time there sorting them. This wasn't the most interesting of jobs as I'm sure you can imagine but I am now quite an expert. Macadamia nuts are one of the only things native to Australia that are exported. You have to wait until they fall off the trees and then collect them from the ground with machines that pick them up using brushes. This process happens three or four times a year. The nuts then go through a machine which takes off their outer husks, then fall through onto a conveyor belt where I would sort out the bad ones to be thrown away - if they were cracked or discoloured, had insect stings or had been eaten by rats. The nuts that were left would fall from the conveyor belt into containers of water. The good ones would sink and be pushed up a pipe to a sloped half pipe type thing which they would role down and be taken from the bottom up into silos. The nuts that floated were sold for macadamia oil. Once the silos were full all the nuts went through the machine again, this time without the dehusker being on a lot slower than the first time so that you could remove any of the remaining bad ones that had been missed. This was the most tedious part of my work and if it wasn't for my music without any doubt I would not have survived. Quite often stones would get stuck in the dehusker so you'd have to open it up, take out any nuts that were in there and remover any stones. This came as a welcome brake from the sorting. Sometimes other things would go wrong too and if you didn't notice in time there would be a lot of picking up to do. Bits of shell could get stuck in the half pipe which would cause all the nuts to build up and eventually overflow. When the silos were nearly full you had to climb up a ladder and push the nuts to one side so more would fit in, again if left a little too long the nuts would overflow and go everywhere. Did you know macadamia nuts can bounce a very long way?

Sydney to Brisbane.....and lots in between

It was really nice being able to drive again even though getting out of Sydney was a little tricky. We didn't know where we were going and the people we were following to the festival apparently didn't either which meant frequently changing lanes at very short notice in rather a lot of traffic. Once we got out of Sydney the scenery was beautiful. The festival was in a valley surrounded by beautiful hills and rivers. When we drove in there was a kangaroo standing next to what later that evening would be the dance tent. We didn't see it again! There were only 10,000 people and there was a really relaxed feel to the whole weekend. There was a swimming pool as it was held in a holiday park although we didn't go in it after the first day because it had changed from being nice and clear to a murky brown colour. Looking at the colour of my feet in the mornings I could see why! One of the tents had some unusual additions for a festival - small beds around the edge, a couple of table tennis tables and table football. When the bands were playing everyone just danced around them. I reckon other festivals should have things like that too. The weather was lovely and hot and although I only knew one of the bands that were playing the music was mostly really good. There was even some random guy on the side of a path playing his drum, cymbal and washing up bowl.
From the festival we drove north to Barrington Tops National Park. We spent our first night as high as we could go before it got dark. With no one else for miles around and surrounded by rain forest and beautiful views (although these we didn't fully appreciate until the morning as the weather when we arrived wasn't too good) it was so peaceful. The next day the sun came out and we went walking through the rain forest down a really steep long hill to a couple of waterfalls. We were intending to walk a lot further but when we got to the waterfalls we discovered that leaches were finding us quite attractive and the further we walked the more we would find. After many frequent and hysterical screams after finding one or more often than not four or five climbing up my shoe or about to bite my ankle or leg, and John (who's reactions were rather calmer) constantly finding them all over his trousers we decided to turn back and retrace our steps as fast as we could all the way back up the hill to the camper van at the top. I thought that we were relatively safe by the van and went a little way into the forest to go to the toilet. As I crouched down I saw directly beneath me the hugest leach I have ever seen - absolutely terrifying! We had planned to climb one of the near by mountains the next day but abandoned this idea and headed off to see different parts of the park, most of the time from the safety of our camper van.
When we left Barrington tops we headed back to the coast and continued our journey North passing yet more beautiful beaches. We spent a night at a place called Crowdy Bay where we walked for hours along the beach without seeing anybody at all and could hear the sea from our van as we went to sleep. When we got further North we headed inland again to a little town called Nimbin. Here when you walk down the street which is lined with multicoloured shop fronts there is an almost constant smell of cannabis. There's a strange museum which is kind of hard to work out what exactly it is that you're supposed to be looking at and many little cafes and relaxed friendly people. Sadly it looked like most of the people who worked in the shops and cafes had taken more than a little too much of something other than cannabis. We stayed at a really nice quiet campsite which lead down to a river where apparently sometimes you can see a platterpus. We were told the best times to see it were the early morning - which wasn't really an option for us - and just before it got dark. We only stayed a couple nights and we forgot to go down on the first night and on the second night John remembered but by the time we got to the river it had got dark so we never did get to meet it. We did however see a wallaby and next to where we parked our van were three beautiful baby cannabis plants. I don't think our campsite could have been better in any way!
From Nimbin we drove back to the coast to Byron Bay. I'd been here when I came to Australia when I was 8 but it was very different to what I remembered. There's a light house on top of a cliff and two long beaches either side. We hired surf boards for a day and have managed to master standing up. There was a pub there that in the evening the tables and benches all turned into the dance floor which was quite funny and something that I doubt you would find in England.
We continued up the coast stopping of on Mt Tamborine to see my Uncle and then onto Brisbane where we left our van and moved into a hostel for a few nights before John flew home and I went back to Mt Tamborine.

Sydney

I met John at the airport the morning I arrived. It was poring with rain - the first time it had rained where I was for ages. Still in the rain and also strong winds, that evening we climbed the harbour bridge. We had to ware special suits and were given waterproofs, hats, hankies and hair ties if we wanted them that would all clip to our suits. We were breathalysed to make sure we weren't drunk and given a briefing about what we'd have to do. We had a practice on a little bridge that they'd built inside, then set off with harnesses on that clipped us on to a rail all the way round. It seemed the harnesses weren't really designed for our safety though, more so for the safety of the people in the passing cars below. If we fell whilst on any of the ladders it wouldn't have been a short fall, it's just we wouldn't have fallen all the way on to the road. We were given head sets to ware so we could hear our guide. The whole way round I was repeating to myself what he was saying to try and remember it all and amazingly it worked! Some of the things I learnt were that the bridge was designed by an Australia call John Job Bradfield who got his ideas from looking at other bridges around the world. It is the largest bridge of that shape in the world at 503 metres long, 49 metres wide and 134 metres high which is twice the height of the Sydney opera house. The bridge was built between 1924 and 1932 mainly by English contractors. 52,800 tones of steel were used, only 20% of that was from Australia and the rest was imported from England. Whilst building it the workers had nothing to attach them to the bridge and 16 people fell and died during it's construction. Only one person lived who fell off and he was an Irish guy called Vince Kelly. Apparently he had to go to hospital but as soon as he could he was back to finish building the bridge along with the other workers. Climbing it was such an amazing experience and the even in the rain the view of the city and the opera house lit up below was stunning. Sadly we weren't allowed to take our cameras up but we did get a free photo that they took of us at the top. On a slightly nicer day we climbed one of the pylons at the end of the bridge and this time we were able to take some photos and enjoy the views in the sun.
John had a friend in Sydney and a few people I'd met either live there or were there at the same time as us so it was really nice to meet up with them all again. We had many very funny nights out although this did mean that we were never up in time to get the free breakfast that our hostel offered. On one of the evenings we were there we went to a chocolate restaurant. I would strongly recommend a stop if you ever happen to pass one. For my main course I had chocolate pizza. You may find this hard to believe (I did when the person serving us suggested it would be wise) but I shared it with someone and it was actually enough! It was a dough base with a thick layer of chocolate on top, then banana, honey come and marshmallows on top of that. For pudding we had chocolate fondue with fruits to dip in to it. Very, very nice!
Sydney has a beautiful botanic garden which you can walk through and get to the opera house. Apart from lots of lovely plants there are thousands of spiders that make massive webs in between the trees and they all just sit there filling the sky waiting for something (or someone) to walk into their trap. There was a tree full of bats all hanging upside down folding and unfolding their wings which was pretty cool to watch. The bats here are huge! There were also lots of people taking part in what looked like exercise classes - not the first time I've seen this as people seem to do their exercises in parks all over Asia too.
There's a monorail that goes around the centre of the city which we decided to have a go on but I think there should have been air conditioning which must have been broken as it was boiling hot. This meant we only had a very short ride.
We left Sydney in a camper van that we hired for the next couple of weeks and set off to a music festival in a place called Wisemans Ferry, a little way North and inland of Sydney.

Melbourne

I got an over night bus from Adelaide to Melbourne. After getting off in the centre of Melbourne I had to get a tram to my hostel. It was 6 o clock in the morning and after a night of not really any sleep this wasn't easy. I managed to get the right tram but it hadn't occurred to me to check which direction I needed to be going in. In fact it hadn't even occurred to me that the tram would go in 2 directions so I ended up right at the wrong end of the line. I did get to see the beach though and then got the same tram all the way back the other way and finally arrived at the stop for my hostel almost 2 hours later. I didn't spend long in Melbourne as I had to get to Sydney to meet John but whilst I was there I explored the town and some of its suburbs, visited the huge Victoria markets, looked around some pretty gardens, saw my 1st possum which had its baby on its back, and had free pancakes (all you could eat) on a Sunday morning in my hostel. I then got another overnight bus up to Sydney.