Friday morning, after a nice long walk through the rainforest with Katie and Zammy, a bacon and egg breakfast, and a farewell gift of a jar of cranberry sauce (for a Thanksgiving turkey sandwich!) I headed off down the mountain. Originally I had hoped to spend a bit of time in, the often talked about, Surfers Paradise (“Surfers” for short), but decided it was a bit too Miami Beach for me and continued on. After driving south for some time along Australia’s Gold Coast, I happened upon the town of Kingscliff. I found myself that night at a rather large caravan park on the beach surrounded by families on vacation. There was something extremely comfortable about Kingscliff, that made it a perfect spot for me to get used to being away from the safety of Brisbane. I spent Friday evening walking on the beach and talking to Paul on the phone, and then fixing myself some dinner on my little one-burner camping stove.
Saturday morning I decided to book myself in for another night in Kingscliff. I figured it’d be a waste to pick up and leave without taking advantage of the beach. With the day before being so dreary, I got out to the beach directly after breakfast, and stayed there until mid afternoon, or as they’d say here ‘mid avo’. Thoroughly tanned, I headed in and browsed the shops. I was extremely excited to find, after ordering an iced coffee off the menu at a café, that an iced coffee in Australia involves ice cream and whipped cream! I wound up the day making myself dinner while listening to an hour long radio special on “The life and music of Ben Lee.” Gosh Australia is a wonderful place!
Sunday morning I drove around until I found a road that pointed south, and followed my map to a little place called Avocado Land. To my disappointment, Avocado Land had been renamed Tropical Fruit World some time ago, but the gift shop still reflected old times. After browsing the shop, buying some avocados, and taking off down the road five minutes, I suddenly realized that I had no real plans for the next few hours of my day, so turned around and went back to Tropical Fruit World. After paying my $20 admission fee, I was taken on my very own private fruit-tasting tour. Something about it being 11:00 in the morning out in the middle of nowhere was really keeping the crowds away. Jason, my own personal fruit guide, taught me that bananas are not fruit, but in fact the largest herb. He also introduced me to my two new favorite fruits… one tastes like chocolate pudding, and the other tastes like vanilla pudding. I can’t remember what either is called, but I’ll know them if I see them in the grocery store! After the fruit tasting wrapped up, I went on a tour of the orchards. By this time families had started to arrive with screaming little children. Imagine myself and five families being pulled by tractors, motoring around in a boat and even riding a toy train throughout Tropical Fruit World, all the while learning about fruit. Tropical Fruit World even had ducks and geese to feed (stale bread provided!), kangaroos, emus, rock wallabies, a donkey and a clidesdale named Sherman. After spending all morning romping around the park on my tour, I was hungry again, so I attended the avo fruit-tasting as well. On my way out I was greeted by my fruit expert, Jason, who pulled up beside my van in a golf cart to smuggle me some mangos. Everything tastes better when it’s free!
Sunday afternoon I drove further south still, hopping out at every scenic look-out and doing the tourist thing. At about 5:00 I pulled in to a tidy little caravan park in Byron Bay about five minutes walk from town. After the usual dinner of veggies and sauce on my butane stove, I wondered into town. Byron Bay is what I imagine Surfers Paradise used to be like before they put the sky-rises in. Surfers everywhere, real long-haired homeless beach-bums, people spilling out of bars and restaurants, people selling handmade jewelry on the streets. It looked like a really great place to be if you had friends, which I didn’t, so I bought some gifts, and a bottle of wine, and headed back to my caravan park.
This morning, Monday, I woke up and it was overcast again. “A good day for traveling” a woman in the bathroom said to me. I don’t know what she meant by that… After coffee on the stove I headed to Byron Bay’s lighthouse, the most westerly point in Australia. I ran into a couple from L.A. who reminded me of my uncle Mark and aunt Cameron. The place was crawling with Americans… an entire tour bus of them. As soon as I had seen all the sites, I headed out of Byron Bay to look for something new and exciting. After getting sick of taking photos of rocky cliffs jutting out into the ocean, I decided to head inland a bit. I passed through New Italy and followed the signs to MacLean- Australia’s Scottish Town, where all the telephone poles are painted with different Scottish tartans. I, of course, drove around until I found MacCallum. The woman whose house it was in front of must have been watching me try to get a picture of myself in front of the pole, because she came out and offered to take my photo. She wasn’t Australian, or Scottish, but from Seattle. Go figure. Just a few kilometers down the road from the MacCallum phone pole, I pulled into the MacLean Riverside Caravan Park and snatched up their last caravan spot for the night. An older couple in the spot behind me have been entertaining me with stories all evening. Their van broke down a few days ago, so they’ve been here a little longer than expected. MacLean is nice, but I hope I don’t get stuck here.
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