Pro Backpacking

BYRON BAY, NEW SOUTH WALES - 3rd January 2010

"Feral" is a word that is not commonly used in the day-to-day vocabulary of an Englishman. In contrast, the Aussies love the word and talk of "feral shoppers" in malls on Boxing Day, "feral traffic" around Melbourne at rush hour, and "feral people" in the scummier suburbs of the city. After my experiences of the last 20 hours or so, I'd offer the following additions:

• Feral like Greyhound coach queues. My Greyhound from Melbourne to Sydney left half an hour late due to incompetent organisation (they decided to swap buses and bays for no reason), but as we arrived on time I figured it was a one off and ignored it. However, a quite remarkable feat was achieved outside Sydney's Central Station last night, as I arrived at 6.30pm for my 7pm coach to Byron Bay to find the best part of 300 backpackers sprawled around in every direction around 3 waiting Greyhound coaches. There were no signs on any coach (or indeed anywhere whatsoever), no announcements, and certainly no order to the queuing system. I've heard rumours that the word "queue" doesn't actually exist in Australia*, but what I faced here was, organisationally, more akin to a baggage reclaim in Bombay circa 1992 than the supposedly "highly developed" tourist industry of an economically advanced country. The Greyhound Method was to queuing for the first coach (no one told us about this - we figured it out by asking around), and once at the front of the queue checking if our name was on the driver's passenger manifest. If not, queue for the second bus. If not again, the third. And if you weren't on there (which was the case for several) you were, apparently, going to be on one of the 2 buses that were arriving at 7.30pm. Absolute shitshow.
  


• Feral like tourism in Byron Bay. The way Byron, right, is described by some travellers and even by the LPG ("congratulations, you've reached the promised land") leaves you wanting to place a tidy wager on it being the location of the Second Coming... and if size of audience is Jesus' criteria, it wouldn't be a bad shout. Early yesterday evening I had a quick browse around to try and book some accomodation overnight here, and soon discovered that there is, quite literally, not a single free bed in the town. At any price (bar one at $240). With absolutely no hope of a Sydney-style last minute accomodation get-out clause, I just booked myself a night Greyhound to Brisbane with accomodation less of an issue up there. But not everyone did the same, and arrival in Byron early this morning revealed wandering clumps of backpackers ambling from hostel to hostel desperately searching for a bed. Further walking revealed streets full of cars with passed out peeps in the back, and even the odd corpse kotching on a bench. I have no idea what the offical population of this place is supposed to be, but at this moment in time - with another 3 Greyhounds full arriving first thing tomorrow, I'd say that figure is off the mark by a factor of 10.
  


• Feral like the Cape Byron Walking Trail. The last 3 months has involved some pretty serious walking - the jungle-clad ascent to Matheran, 10km tour of Singapore with Billy, and rain-soaked mission around Albert Park being just a few. I always thought it'd take something special to top Kuala Lumpur though - non-stop walking for 10 hours on the back of no sleep is not ideal preparation for the cross-country gradients and sapping humidity of the Bukit Ninas Rainforest in the middle of the city. Then came this morning...
  
  
  About 20 minutes walk out of the main Byron Bay town centre begins a 4km trail through the Cape Byron Coastal Rainforest (see above) to the historic lighthouse at the summit, and back round via the Easternmost Point of Mainland Australia and the beaches on the northern shore of the cape. All well and good, except that as I set off on my way I was (almost inevitably) greeted by a phenomenal rainstorm and was dripping wet within about 2 minutes. Bags and clothes stored in a locker, the only option was to lose the t-shirt and pretend I was in the sea. All well and good, except that being in the sea doesn't involve stomping in soaking boots through soaking mulchy footpaths and up hundreds of muddy, mucky steps though the dense forest. Even a highly trained athlete like yours truly felt pretty shattered by the time I reached the top, but the Sun came out just as I came across a couple of chicas enjoying a spectacular lookout (see right). All well and good, but the emergence of the blazing Australian summer Sun, on the back of torrential rain, when you're surrounded by rainforest, produces thermal humidity like nothing I've experienced in India, Malaysia or anywhere. Between gorgeous relief from a periodic coastal breeze, your body is engulfed in an all-encompassing heat that is much like the wall of heat that used to greet passengers disembarking their aeroplanes in India before airconditioned walkways... but more potent. Oh, and I got bitten my a leech (for the second time on my travels - I forgot to mention it happening with Kyemala on the ascent to the summit of Anigundi Coffee Estate).

Feral as times may have been, taking the rough with the smooth is all part of the fun, and the latter in particular was a top class experience - and the soaking state of my clothing was rectified with half an hour of blazing beach sunshine. Things are gonna get a whole lot more feral for the next 10 days though - 5 more overnight bus trips are needed to cram in 3 days safari around Fraser Island and 3 days on a catamaran over the Great Barrier Reef. Photos are unlikely to appear for ages... sit tight!

* apparently they just call them "lines of people"