After 17 glorious, relaxing, lazy days in Byron, I’m back in Sydney again. It’s going to take a while to readjust.

Byron’s one of my favourite places, the weather’s perfect, the beaches are beautiful and everyone’s so relaxed and chilled out.

Here’s some bits and pieces from the trip.

Most days were spent bumming on the beach or going fishing.

Or playing with the puppies – yes they’re puppies. They’re only 6 months old. On the left is Sunshine, she belongs to Gav and on the right is Dooby, Esta’s little princess, who is recovering from having a cyst removed on her head, hence the half shaved head.

These little puppies sure did rack up a bill for Jan and Esta. First Dooby had the cyst removed, then a few weeks later little Sunshine got sick.

We still don’t know what caused her sickness, but we suspect she ate a blue bottle or something bad at the beach. As soon as we got back from the beach she started to eat grass and didn’t stop for 4 hours – which is not a good sign. The vet took a scan of her belly and it looked like she’d eaten a cloth, but when they operated they found that Sunshine had eaten way too much grass, so much that it had turned solid in her belly and was making her more sick.

There are a lot of small country towns in the area. One that I thought was really cute was a place called Mooball. The petrol station and all the telegraph poles are painted with a cow print pattern.

There’s an old railway track that isn’t in use anymore, so we went walking along the tracks, just for fun.

Across the bridge we were met with a pack of cows who were actually on the wrong side of the fence. They kept looking at us suspiciously like we were going to try steal their milk or something. Paranoid cows… must be something in the air.

One morning we woke up and there was this giant lizard just chilling out the front. When someone (I can’t remember who) walked past the lizard it freaked out and came charging in my direction, I too freaked out and ran away. Man that thing was fast!

One of the great things about having friends that live in the area is that they know all the good spots.

One day we took an inflatable boat out on a tea tree lake and just bobbed around. The lake was amazing, it’s a deep burnt red colour and the temperature varies depending on how deep the water is. When you’re walking in shallow water the water’s real hot, but as it gets deeper the temperature drops.

Another hidden gem is Whites Beach. You have to drive off the main road down a dirt track to get there, then trek down the cliff.

It’s well worth the effort. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves.

On my last day Maree and Chris took us 4wd-ing at Border Ranges National Park which is at the border of NSW and QLD. While driving around we stumbled upon a few spots that had a bunch of bee hives. Just as well we were locked up in the car, there were heaps of bees.

At the top of the national park there’s the most amazing view of Mount Warning and the ocean.

The view was amazing and it was the perfect way to end a fabulous trip.