Fly like an eagle, or with them even!
Lunch at Broadwater
It’s been headwind all the way so far but today was grim. All day I was cycling into a 20-30km/h headwind, at times on the flat I was crawling along at only 14km/h and working bloddy hard too. Not only energy sapping it was spirit sapping stuff, from the moment I got up it never relented. But they say every cloud has a silver lining and in this case it was true.
Floating along
That evening as I’m crawling up another hill into the wind I see some hang-gliders so I pull into the rest area to take a look. Turns out the Byron Bay hang-glider club were there so I asked to have a go for which they rquest $140 for 30 minutes. That was a bit rich for me but I got them to change the flight to a lesson and the 30 minutes offered to 75 and I forked over the cash. It was still a lot but damned if the wind wasn’t going to work for me for a change. It was incredible, I was doing 360 degree turns, climbing, diving all sorts of stuff some of which nearly led to disaster and an emergency landing but we’ll gloss over that. At one point whilst riding a thermal and gaining some height an eagle joined us spiralling around us barely 20 feet away. He had a fish or something in its claws. I tried to get a photo but I could get the camera to focus on the bird so I just got a blob but it was cool.
Much happier I ploughed onto Byron Bay, just as I got into town to look for a campsite some guy on a bike waves me over. He recoginsed me from the road a few days earlier and he gave e a tour of the town, where to go what to see and then delivered me to a campsite on the beach. It was only a few hunded meters from the most easterly point on the mainland so I went for the obligatory photograph. Byron Bay is great and the following day I decided to move to the Arts Factory and stay for another night. The Arts Factory is awesome, every backpacker style place I’ve ever seen pales in comparison to this. They have a hostel, cabins, teepees, and a campsite in addition to a bar, cafe, resturaunt, spa, pool and loads of free onsite stuff. I got some didgeridoo lessons, did a bush tucker walk and in the evening there was more free entertainment.
Stevo Extremo
Cockatoo Paul is a one man band which explains why he plays with himself. I was talking to him earlier in the day so when he saw me that night I was fair game for taking the piss. He even composed a little song for me about cycling around Oz, not very flattering but funny as hell. After he was done Stevo Extremo came on to do a fire show which was spectacular. And all this was free in a campsite that costs half what the other places cost. If I didn’t need to get moving so quickly to beat the monsoon season up in the Northern Territories I’d have stayed a few more days. Who know I may be back. I’m missing quite a bit of stuff I’d normally have lingered for.