Today was market day! :) It was rainy and wet but the weather was still warm. There were over twenty stalls set up with fruit, vegetables, coffee, and mostly healthy food.There was also musical entertainment and a giant dancing strawberry.
This flute playing man was very nice but very serious about his music. As you can see here he has three types of flutes with him just for playing at the markets.
I was so impressed with the large selection of fruit and veg. I picked many things which I've never heard of before and now I am so excited to cook and eat healthy again.
The big brown guy on the left is called a Taro. The 3 little purple guys in front of him are called Sweet hearts. In front of them are pieces of fresh Turmeric. The small jar to the far left is Red Gum Honey. The big jar beside the sweet hearts is filled with a variety of sprouts which taste absolutely incredible! The big bunch of greens and purples in the back are mustard greens, amaranth, chinese celery, and a couple of other things I didn't catch the name of. The light green guy to the right is a Lebanese Zucchini. The colourful pink guys in the front are Borlotti Beans. The oil is Australian Extra Virgin Olive Oil infused with Garlic & Chilli. The delicious looking rainbow on the far right is a 100% dehydratedfruit flat made of strawberries, dragonfruit, mango, and pineapple. And lastly the bunch of chillies, lemongrass, ginger, and other greens which are tied to the orange flowers are a mix which was prepared to by the stall owner for making homemade curry paste. YUM! Taylor I posted all of this to make you want to come here and cook for me ;P We stopped at Manna Haven and Wazza had a green smoothie that was served with a purple pansy flower on top. I ate it and it was delicious. I can now say that I eat pansies for breakfast! Ha ha ha :) Anyone reading this will have to forgive me for this post today. I am amused so easily lol.
Close to where I am staying there is a shop that had this old tow truck. I'm not sure what year it is but I thought it looked pretty antique and cool.
I now have wheels and a mobile home (aka.campervan). I purchased this beauty from 2 Denmark backpackers. This is them saying goodbye to their much-loved home.
They painted the van themselves after being inspired by the movie called The Endless Summer
They were so helpful with transferring the vehicle over to me. A fun fact I learned in the process: The danish word for over is slut I hadn't realised this when I borrowed their phone and ended the call by pushing on the word "slut". I thought they had changed it to that on purpose. I want a phone that ends a call with a better saying than "end". The Spanish Film Festival has been playing at the Byron Bay cinema.
I saw the movie called the Body and it was such a good one. It's much easier to watch sub-titles on a big screen. If you like thrillers than I highly recommend seeing this one even if you have to watch it on a small screen.
Today was a pretty mellow day. Walked around Byron and the beach. Tomorrow I'll be venturing up to the light tower which you can see at the top of the hill in this picture.The sand on this beach squeaks when you walk on it.
I ate the most delicious yet still very healthy lunch at a restaurant called Manna Haven. I had to post a picture of it especially for my friend Linda who always takes pictures of food when we eat out :) I could eat at this place every day. The best part is that the price was very reasonable. It only cost $13.50 for this meal which is very low compared to what Perth would charge for this quality of food. The sauce on top is Tzatziki YUM!!!
These are a few snap shots I got of a creek and the beach.
We officially arrived in Byron Bay, New South Wales at 4:15a.m. this morning. I have now crossed from one end of Australia to the other and I seem to still be in one piece but feeling quite exhausted. I only have 2 pictures for today but I have some catching up to do from the previous 2 days given that I didn't have any internet service.My favourite thing that I saw today was this little adorable guy. He is the size of my thumb nail! He was so tiny and let me get so close.
This evening I was lucky enough to catch a couple of live songs by Lisa Hunt and the Forever Soul Orchestra. She's such an incredible singer and she's got an interesting history. Her biography can be found at this link http://www.foreversoul.com/pages/biography.html
Byron Bay has delicious and healthy food, very nice clothes that are my favourite style and reasonably priced, and a beautiful beach with compacted sand that's easy to run on. Pictures will be soon to come. Last nights drive was very slow because there were many winding roads and low speed limits. I managed to get a cool pic when I was getting sleepy in the truck and looking for something to do.
While listening to more good tunes on the road I realised I had forgot to mention the John Butler Trio in the list of awesome Australian bands. John lives in Fremantle, Western Australia where I've lived for the previous months prior to this trip. When I saw him live at the Fly By Night club I had to contain myself from breaking out into tears. His more personal performances are an absolute must to see.
Yesterday we stopped in a town which had backwards parking stalls. The only way that you could park was if you reversed into the spot at an angle. I lost my Ayurvedic toothpaste down the drain while taking this picture so I figured I better at least post it. Merrrrrr
The day before we had beautiful scenery to look at. The morning started off with rays of sun shining through the clouds as we drove down a side road to find 2 geocaches
We passed through some green hills. All I could get for a picture is what I could see through my window :( I would have loved to go for a walk but there was driving to be done.
A small town that we fueled up in had these antique looking buildings
We stopped in the town called "Broken Hill" and went to Kennan Lookout to get a good view of the mines. There is a glass building on top of the mines.
The mines stretch a length of 7.5kms, have a width of 250 meters, and a depth of 850 meters which appears to make the shape of a boomerang. More than $100 billion of minerals have been collected here. Mainly silver, lead, and zinc. There are also a lot of rare minerals.
The geocache that we found here is my favourite one to date. The treasure was a small version of the New Testament.
Inside the cover was written "Love Sux" All that I have to say to that is "Amen Sista!!"
The ute has been left behind as it awaits pickup to be returned back to Perth. Wazza replaced it with a Holden Jackaroo which we packed to the roof with all of our gear.
It's nice to see him smiling again :) Unfortunately this ride is not equipped with a cd player or radio so we had to improvise and strap the ipad to my backpack stereo. It works awesome!
As we were driving we saw a beautiful rainbow. I'm not sure how well you can see it in this picture but it was very clear and bright. That's the best sign we could have received today which tells us the journey will be nothing but great from now on.
That's about all I got for pictures today but I did get to know some great Australian bands that I'm now a huge fan of. Firstly there's the band called Collard Greens & Gravy
This is one of the best Australian blues trio groups and reminded me of my family and the days I used to rock the dance floor with my Uncle Doug and mom. This next band is a folk/rock band from Broome, Western Australia. The Pilgram Brothers
Another fantastic band is a Blues & Roots band from Australia The Bondi Cigars
These next two groups are not from Australia but they are still new to me. The Balkan Beat Box has a Mediterranean-influence with Balkan, middle eastern, gypsy punk, and electronica sound. Taylor you would really like these guys. Be sure to check them out!
Lastly but not leastly is Noah & the Whale They are an English band from London.
I learned some interesting information from the tow truck driver in which I forgot to mention the other day. He was asking me about the Bison back in Canada and told me that one of the local farmers imports Bison semen to impregnate his cows with. Yikes!! He imports it all the way across the world purely to make better tasting meat to eat. All I could think was poor mother cows!! Mother nature did not build cows to birth Bison. Have a look at the size of the Bison in this picture...
Now let's have a look at a cow...
Hmmmmm.....does anyone else see the difference??? What would the baby Bison/cow look like when it came out??? Would the mother cow even recognize it as it's own??? One word for this=CRAZY! Humans will do anything for tasty food. It's odd. I checked this out on good old Wikipedia and they even have a name for this. They are called Bovid Hybrids and they end up looking like this guy here.
Once again....POOR MOMMA COW!! I learn something new every day.And today was a good day. I hope everyone else had a good day too!
The geocache for the day led us to the sand dunes. We had a nice 6km walk along the beach to the dunes. Here are pictures of what we saw
The bird featured here is believed to be an Osprey
The plants in the picture below have a very rubbery texture
The purple plant shown below is a weed but I still think the colours are beautiful and it's camera worthy
I also liked the look of this little beetle. There are over 28,000 species of beetles in Australia. I'm not sure which this guy belongs to but he may very well be a mealworm beetle.
I really like the markings on this piece of wood. It looks like it's telling a story somehow.
This little tree decided that it wanted to grow by itself right in the ocean. I'm not sure how it manages to survive and not drown.
Here are the seashells I collected today. They are quite different to the ones I've seen in Fremantle.
At sunset Wazza took Mikoto for a walk and returned with these beautiful photos.
