This is overlooking Miners Beach in Port Macquarie, an unofficial nude beach. It wasn't really beach weather this morning so there was nobody down there (nude or otherwise) but that didn't discourage granddad from waiting ;)

Back on Port's main beach are these elaborately painted rocks everywhere.

Everything from memorials for lost loved ones, to engagement and marriage announcements, to general 'party hard' messages - good stuff!

There isn't a lot else of interest in Port Macquarie and we had some 500kms of driving to get through today, so we left pretty quickly and immediately got off the beaten track.

Somewhere off the beaten track - I couldn't even tell you where exactly. At various points along the Pacific Highway (the main north-south route along the coast we're following) are a number of so-called "Tourist drives" - alternative detours to the highway. This one meandered through small towns and national park before eventually popping out on the coast. As far as the drive goes this was all we really came across of interest before the weather started to really pack in. As we neared our intended destination of Byron Bay, we started phoning hostels in the area (from our Lonely Planet guide book) to find accommodation. It should have crossed my mind that today is Saturday and Byron is the type of place that is probably always booked out over the weekend, but it didn't and sure enough everywhere we called was fully booked.

Welcome to Nimbin - our plan B. Nimbin is a ways inland (70km in fact) from coastal Byron, but the closest civilisation to what we're intending to do tomorrow anyway. Lonely Planet described it as being full of hippies with something of a drug problem, but nothing could have prepared us for what we've seen here hehe.

For starters, this is the door of our room. Psychedelic painting aside, Christiania is the name of a community that we visited in Copenhagen whose ongoing marijuana trade is a thorn in the side of the authorities.

Just as an aside, our room has a TV in the corner with no antenna and nowhere to plug it in hahaha! Maybe a nice vase or (marijuana) plant would have been sufficient.

And this is our hostel. We're staying in a cabin but we had the option of a tee-pee (that looks like it would struggle to keep the rain out), a gypsy wagon (same story), and there's the mushroom thing in the tree over there which would have been cool but it's taken. When we arrived, two Asian hippies were just walking out. Asian hippies - I thought I'd seen everything. Nimbin itself is only a small town with a population of around 350 characters, most of them out prowling the streets. We wandered into town to find dinner and were immediately offered weed by a group of Aboriginal hippies sitting on the pavement. Aboriginal hippies - I thought I'd seen everything. I didn't think it a safe idea to get my camera out but Nimbin is about as alternative as any place could possibly get. At first we thought we were the only two (dare I say) 'normal' folk in town, but in the pub we found an older couple who had also been caught out by all Byron Bay accommodation being fully booked and they did not look comfortable at all hehe. When we later left the pub, some dude was sitting in plain view on the front steps dividing a box of weed into plastic bags hahaha! Oddly enough though, Nimbin is firmly on the tourist trail and hordes of tour buses stop here every day (and get offered weed). So I'll endeavour to get some photos of the town tomorrow because this place really has to be seen to be believed! I think the police largely turn a blind eye to all of this (just a bunch of hippies in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere - who cares) but in 2008 this scene took a hit when a huge force of heavily armed state police made mass arrests of pot dealers. That doesn't appear to have succeeded in changing anything though.

So then, Nimbin, the once-upon-a-time sleepy little dairying village is today a true product of the hippie era and famous as being the 'alternative' lifestyle capital. Nimbin shot to fame when it hosted the 1973 Aquarius Festival (often described as Australia's equivalent to the Woodstock Festival). The festival attracted some 10,000 students, hippies, and visionaries from all over Australia. Many of them stayed on after the 10-day festival to live the dreams and ideology of Aquarius, and thus we have the Nimbin of today.

Nimbin is quirky to say the least with its unique mural streetscape of indigenous, rainforest, and psychedelic facades, not to mention the locals (many of who blatantly offer you weed and so forth right on the street hehe). The chick that runs the local laundromat walked passed me as I was taking a photo and quietly said "I have hash cookies, and I'm in the laundry" and continued walking hahaha! Awesome :)

Nice.

Newspapers articles are posted in windows of those awesome ten days almost 40 years ago - it was certainly the town's proudest moment.

True dat. Peace out.

From one type of green to another, this is Rocky Creek Dam - a drinking water catchment and the primary supply for the area.

It's not terribly exciting but a good way to kill an hour, playing in the water (this is the dam's spillway) and checking out the walking trails.

From there we drove into the bowels of the awesome Nightcap National Park. The park covers 81 square kilometres and is apparently home to a rich diversity of threatened plants and animals.

We headed straight to the 100m Minyon Falls. You can explore the bottom of the falls and much of the national park via a maze of walking trails, but the day was getting on so we left it at that.

A couple hours later, and after an absence of almost six years, I was back on the Gold Coast :) I often came down here while I was living in Brisbane and bloody loved it! Plenty more on this tomorrow.

This is Pacific Fair Shopping Centre in Broadbeach, just down the road from where we're staying. The Gold Coast is in the huge northeast state of Queensland, and when I lived in these parts Pacific Fair was Queensland's largest regional shopping centre but apparently something else overtook it in 2006 (the year I left). This place has pretty much everything under the sun, but all we wanted was lunch and a Lonely Planet Central America guidebook for next week.

And this is downtown Surfers Paradise in the heart of the Gold Coast.

Being a Monday afternoon it was all pretty quiet around town, but on a weekend the place is absolutely chocker.

And this is what everybody comes for - the beach!

Not looking too impressive today with that gloomy shit off to the south (over where we were yesterday), but Surfers Paradise beach is regularly voted as one of the best in Australia and the world. 25 degrees in the water (that's 77 degrees for the Americans), 25 degrees out of it - perfect way to spend a day!

As for the Gold Coast, it consists of almost 60km of holiday resorts and surfing beaches, and is a major tourist destination with some 10 million tourists calling in every year. Beaches aside, the Gold Coast is also home to several major theme parks including Dreamworld and Warner Brothers Movie World. I remember being insanely jealous of school mates back in day who came here for a holiday! (My time was coming though, I just didn't know it :)

What's that dude doing?

Bloody hell it's good to be back! (And bloody hell my arms are tanned compared to the rest of me hehe - I need to get my shirt off more often ;)

Surfers Paradise is called that for a reason, and it didn't fail to deliver massive waves today! I spent probably close to an hour out in these, getting pummelled - video here.

My uncle has lived on the Gold Coast for the last year or so in Southport, just north of Surfers. I went to catch up with him tonight for the first time in, umm, six years. Check out the view from his 19th-storey apartment - I could never get sick of waking up to that!

Coolangatta! This is the southern-most town of the Gold Coast and right on the Queensland border with New South Wales.

And this is one of the nicest of all the beaches on the Gold Coast for mine - Greenmount Beach, overlooked by Coolangatta's main drag.

After the 30-minute drive from Surfers, Kristina needed a whiz so she wasted no time getting straight in the water hahaha!

Looking back over Coolangatta, and way off in the distance over the water is Surfers Paradise.

On the other side of the headland from Greenmount is Rainbow Bay, and we just so happened to be here at the right time to see this...

...the 2012 Quicksilver Pro surfing tournament - sweet!

Boom! Big waves today - perfect!

Today was the fourth of about ten days into the competition, and this afternoon's action was all about the ladies.

I've never seen a surfing competition before but as far as I could figure they go out in pairs and have 15 minutes to catch as many waves as possible and make them count. Points are given out of 10 for each wave successfully surfed, and after the 15 minutes are up the one of the two with the most points accrued wins that round.

After every round the surfers would be mobbed for autographs as they made their way out of the water before having a TV camera shoved in their face. We were sure we saw some big names today but we wouldn't have known it hehe.