Merry Christmas everyone!

Hello and Merry Christmas to everyone. We hope you all had a fab time. Well its been a while since we last updated the blog so we will start with Byron Bay. This was just a small town by the beach. A really nice place but not a lot happening. Here we met up with some friends that were taking the same route as us and took a walk to see the most easterly point in Australia. Its a beautiful lookout right by a lighthouse where dolphins and turtles swim beneath you in the sea. We spent some time here and on the beaches nearby, all in all a nice little stop.

From Byron Bay travelers often go to Nimbin, its known for being one of a kind and still stuck in the 1970s as a pot smoking hippy land!!! We'd never heard of this place before but it sounded like something we had to see so we booked a tour to see it. We'd heard that a lot of backpackers go WWOFing (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) What you do here is work on farms for accommodation and food - you don't earn money but we aren't spending money either. Its a great way to get a real Oz experience, often working with animals and general farm maintenance. So we thought we'd give it a go. Seeing as though we were heading down to Sydney we thought we'd go to a farm just outside of Byron. What we didn't realise when we arranged it is that is was right near Nimbin. We arranged with the tour company to drop us off in Nimbin then we can re-join after our 4 days on the farm.

As we walked through the town we met Tess (the owner of the farm) who didn't look like your average farmer. She was walking around in bare feet and was with her family and friends who were just typical hippy people!!! team RA look a little out of place to say the least.

It was an 80 arce farm but with a twist.......... It was a hippy commune with 5 dwellings. Everything on the farm was built themselves - it looked like a third world country and we were there to give aid! Just for a taste of what the people where like we met a couple called Andre and DeLac who were the same age as us. She had all her bits n bobs hanging out as she wore hardly any clothes, had a shaved head and was wearing a pan on her head, whilst Andre was slaughtering a goat and keeping the skull for his "collection" ha lol.

The work we did included road building (which blistered our hands) planting trees (looking out for snakes as we did this) oil timber and washed the outside of the house which was made out of tin. One thing we did get to do was shower outside!! Literally you took a shower and people were walking past. One time I was in it and two people were having and argument right next to me!!!!! lol. oh and the toilet was a hole in the ground! They did make us feel at home though, they were genuine people who included us in everything they did, we ate all of our meals as a big family, even down to going to watch the nativiety play at the school with everyone (although it did turn out to be about spaceships!!) It was so funny all of the parents were pure hippies and all the food was organic vegetarian. It was quite nice as everyone (including Tess) grows their own veges so everything was nice a fresh.

We slept in Tess's house which she was in the middle of building. Our room was soon to be her daughters new bedroom and didn't yet have windows just plastic sheets. To be fair this was fine in nice weather, the only problem was at 4am when the turkey's and geese and all the other animals started clucking and cock-a-doodle-doing. One night however was a different story.............A massive storm came blowing the plastic off the walls and the rain into our room, we had to get up at 2am in the rain and climb across wooden beams in our PJ's to get the sheeting and try and put it back on!! All while their rockveiler is barking thinking we were burglar's, and we're trying not to stand on any snakes that might be on the ground (she warned us she'd seen the most deadly snakes in Australia on her farm!!). Each of the dwellings was occupied by either family members or randoms that needed a place to stay. One of these randoms was called Wolf, he'd lived in a Tepee in the forest for a few years and needed a change so he turned up on Tess's doorstep and they set about making a house. For someone who has lived off the land and managed in a Teepee he had an awesome set of DJ decks, digital and everything!! He was a funny guy, always stoned and telling us how much energy we brought to the place, one night he even taught us how to DJ.

Anyway in turned out to be an experience we will never forget and one we glad we did. We rejoined the tour on our last day and everyone thought what we'd just done was hilarious, it was so nice to be back with people that actually washed!

The week after couldn't have been more different. We went on a 5 day surf camp that took us from Byron bay to Sydney. There was loads of us, we took a bus down to Spot X where we stayed for 2 nights and 2 days and this is where we had our first surfing lesson. Everyone in the camp were surfers so it was quite chilled out and they cooked gorgeous food. We were knackered after surfing, it really took it out of us but we managed to stand up and learnt how to read the ocean and tell if it is safe or not.

On a night we would all get together, play drinking games and chill out by the bonfire, a really good way to met some new people. We left Spot X after 2 days and headed to Crescent head. The waves here were a bit bigger and good for putting out new found talent to the test. We had around 2 surf lessons a day which at 2 hours long was enough! We were taught by a 8x world champion surfer, We stayed here for another 2 days before making the final journey to Sydney.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Unfortunately due our camera being nicked we couldn't do one last time. however here's another one

All our love

Team RA

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