Trials and tribulations of a trip across the Ditch
IT’S time we had a travel column. Bangalow was our destination because that’s where the grandkids live and it’s near Byron Bay, which is about as close to New Zealand as you can get on mainland Australia.
The flight from Queenstown takes less time than you spend checking in at the airport, just as parking your car at the airport for a couple of weeks costs only a bit more than the airfare.
The queues formed for body searches and luggage scanning are part of the fun. A proposal to speed things up by insisting that all passengers travel naked and get dressed at the other end is being considered by the International Air Transport Association.
If you need a rental car at Coolangatta, hire one from the airport. It may be dearer but you will avoid dealing with the offairport firm we struck.
One of their staff, a finalist in the Ugly Australian of the Year Award, snapped ‘‘google it!’’ when I asked for a road map but his offsider rummaged around and found a printed map, which allowed us to get lost in the oldfashioned way. But kindness is the Australian norm, and when the phone didn’t work at the airport a bystander handed us his instrument and wandered off for a coffee.
We stayed at Byron Bay, which has two million visitors a year but, unfortunately, they all decided to spend the same week there as we did, so traffic congestion was constant.
Beautiful beaches, including one for nude bathing, handy for air passengers who don’t bother to get dressed after the body search. A trip on the 3km, solarpowered Byron Bay Railroad Company train reveals something of what has been lost since the line from Lismore to Murwillumbah closed in 2004. And you have to love those place names.
I visited Tumbulgum just because of the name, as I did years ago with Tumbarumba. I asked a local if they were all Aboriginal names.
‘‘Some are, Jeem,’’ he replied, ‘‘But we know they attract tourists, so many places are scrabbling around looking for something colourful. There’s a boring Smithville down south which changed its name to Tittibumbum and now people are flocking to the place.’’
I saw hundreds of road signs about wildlife. Every few miles on the freeway a message flashed ‘‘Look Out! Koalas About’’ and signs depicting kangaroos, wombats and whatnot were all over the place.
My guide explained that the signs were there just to give tourists a feeling of being surrounded by exotic creatures.
‘‘Haven’t seen a koala here for 20 years,’’ he admitted, ‘‘but visitors like to think they’re lurking nearby. In fact, you’ll be interested to know that up near Brisbane there are signs saying ‘‘Watch out. Kiwis about’’.
‘‘Gosh! Kiwis in Queensland?’’
‘‘Yeah, that’s right, Jeem. They’re sneaking in all over the place. Taking our jobs, getting on the dole. Filling up our prisons. Real pests. We should send them all back.’’
My guide showed me the very spot where Lord Byron wrote his later poems on the beach at Byron Bay. You certainly learn about a country from a knowledgeable local.
There are some great country pubs all showing walltowall Rugby World Cup coverage, which disproved the theory that rugby is ignored in Australia. There’s even a $2 coin with the Wallabies logo on it, a fine example of the supreme optimism which pervades the Lucky Country.
Happily, a type of English is widely used in Australia. Putting an ‘‘o’’ on the end of words is commonplace. Ambulance becomes ambo, the Bangalow Bowling Club is the bowlo and the garbage collector is a garbo. This last one was a gift to the bloke who empties wheelie bins in Brunswick Heads. He calls his firm Greta Garbo
Ltd. Byron Bay boasts an arts precinct housed in the old factory of the North Coast Dairy CoOperative known as Norco which gave us the Australian slang ‘‘norks’’ for female breasts.
Australia is awash with culture. Dame Edna was appearing at Brisbane and only the fact that my favourite Aussie statesman, Sir Les Paterson, wasn’t on the bill prevented me from shooting up to see the show, and while Ohakune’s famous giant carrot is our own cultural icon, at Bellina they’ve gone one better with a giant prawn.
The town’s intellectuals weren’t happy with it on the main street so Bunnings, a firm wellknown for the ugliness of its buildings, offered space in their car park where it can be seen to this day, attracting and repelling visitors in equal measure.
Don’t delay with your trip to Byron Bay. The day we left the paper ran a story about the township being under water by the year 2100, so we got out just in time.