After too many news-feed refreshes, deleted and re-worked itineraries/complete and utter travel plan overhauls, we are finally ready to hit the road. It has been a long time coming.
I changed plans as often as Australia changed border restrictions. I did not learn. Too many hours wasted when I could have been watching some American crime/reality/serial-killer doco on Netflix.
I’ve typed ‘playdates kids travelling around Australia’ into Google. I’ve read blogs about free spirited blonde families who live on the road. Too many blogs. nstagram families with millions of kids, all with long, blonde hair. All that long, blonde hair. Long hair is not conductive to travelling. Shouldn’t living on the road give you short hair? Or does living in a vehicle and not working mean you have more time for things like combing knots out of your five children’s hair each time you shower them all and wash their hair with shampoo and conditioner which you need to do because it’s so long. Also how do they all have so many children and look so happy? I can barely cope with one four-year-old with a very short bob!
First we were doing ‘The Big Lap’ (the name for doing a loop of Australia as referenced by many a good Facebook group). Then Coronavirus happened. We felt thankful to be able to leave our house, then sit on the beach (without pretending we were doing a yoga butterfly pose), then leave our state. Now, time is running away, and The Big Lapper’s Facebook group members are adamant: four months is absolutely NOT enough time to do a loop of Australia, especially with a 4-year-old in tow. Too bad. Now it’s looking more like an East Coast hopefully to Darwin sprint.
Things are all pretty standard until we hit Byron Bay. I wondered about this place lately, about a backpacker town without backpackers…Byron, a place dear to my soul since first visiting it as a REAL backpacker with my even more real German backpacker boyfriend (and now husband) 16 years ago. We lived in a share house with 16 people and five bedrooms and our bedroom was the size of our mattress. I worked two jobs at the same time because in Byron 16 years ago no-one would hire anybody in hospitality full time. Harder to replace when they leave (and they all leave). So, I juggled 20 hours at a family owned ice cream shop and 20 hours at a café around the corner (both still running today almost completely unchanged). I was allowed to eat as much ice cream while working as I wanted. The owner thought it was a good advert for the ice cream. If the staff are eating it on shift it must be good. And it was. All I ate was ice cream and sometimes sushi if I needed something savoury for dinner. The best combination I still remember: dark chocolate ice cream with tangy lemon sorbet.
And now? Oh, how I love the idea that I may be able to (try) Cheering Up, (some much needed) Slowing Down and (never possible) Chilling Out (it’s just not who I am) – just by being in a different town. But it’s a bit out of whack this visit. Our favourite café is only doing take away, another is open but food is surprisingly disappointing (maybe the good international chefs have all left?) and worst of all, something that has probably never happened in the 30 years it’s been playing live music every single night of the week; THE RAILS IS CLOSED. Apparently, the council are fixing up the carpark. Cleaning it up. Won’t be any old beaten up $2000 Tarago vans parking there in future. I’m told it’ll re-open in a week’s time, but we’ll be gone by then. If The Rails is closed, my Byron visit is all but ruined. I’d daydreamed for months about how our four-year-old was finally old enough to keep awake that little bit later so that she could be part of the wacky-tobacci clouded footloose and fancy free dancing in front of the band at 8pm. This was going to be something that she remembered forever. A milestone for her 21st birthday. And here’s a photo of me the first time I danced to a random Xavier Rudd sounding guy selling $10 EP’s at The Rails in Byron when I was four years old. Won’t happen now. I try to find some positives. Less people mean less cars, right? Wrong. We are still stuck in standstill traffic for at least 10 minutes trying to get through town from The Pass to The Industrial Estate where we are bunkering up with some old friends come locals. And it is, of course, still impossible to get a park at Wategos. Still, glorious weather and world-class beaches, this place has always been and will always be pretty unbeatable (just please come back once coronavirus is over and The Rails is open!).
But what is this place without the backpackers, without the riffraff (and I use the term ‘riffraff’ with love, I would most definitely be referred to as riffraff on a good travelling day!)? Without those people who have now been ‘cleaned up’ from that park you don’t want to walk through to cut through to The Rails from the street, and now live in their new digs at the newly established shanty towns of Tallows beach? Or had their parents pay for their flight home back to Europe (where their once in a lifetime dream of being an overseas backpacker is crushed from COVID-19). I feel like some of the point is missing. The heart is gone. What is this place now it has been ‘cleaned up’ by council and void of backpackers?
Does this just make it Noosa? Soul-less and pretentious. (But people love Noosa). My friends love Noosa. My husband loves Noosa! I am being SO unfair! It’s true, they are right, the beaches are divine. Shelling prawns and drinking a schooner at sunset on the balcony of the Surf Life Saving Club is about as good as life gets. Plus, the weather….how much more spoilt can we get?! That’s the problem with travelling a lot and living in a beautiful country. You get used to the beauty after a while and it just becomes normal. And you get picky and don’t like a town if there’s no off-beat book shop which also sells Melbourne standard coffees and homemade cakes. It’s like having a day off, every day. But still feeling like you have no time.
I’m striving for positives in Noosa while we drive circles each morning up and down the main street trying to get a park for the beach. Towns like this must be busy 365 days a year. We wait in long lines for take away coffees with people standing too close to each other and bins overflowing with take away cups (the ‘new’ normal). QLD is confused by flailing COVID-19 restrictions – some cafes are still serving completely from take away cups and plates and diligently getting contact details. I ask ‘what about the environment?’, they agree and say they have to do it – COVID-19 rules. Some cafes are completely back to normal. COVID-19 WHAT? I order a meal in a trendy café, sit down and catch from the corner of my eye a young guy in the kitchen making ham and cheese croissants with his bare hands. I want to run (but want my smashed avocado and Meredith goats cheese on sourdough more). I chat to the owner of a caravan park we stay in who is spraying the metal handles on each and every one of the bathroom doors six times per day herself. She is happy to do it. COVID-19 rules. The majority of campground bathrooms look like they haven’t been cleaned in weeks, let alone twice a day. Still, it’s good to be on the road again, good to be free. Six months ago I would not have been thankful to have just been allowed on the road at all. And that’s the thing with Australia, we are so used to our freedom and the beauty before us that we sometimes forget to appreciate it at all.
Article by Tania from Achtung Camper.
