Outback Wanderers: Day 35: Rain, Rain Go Away

December 19, 2010

If yesterday’s altitude reminded me of my home country, today clinched it. We manage to squeeze in breakfast – it starts drizzling as I’m preparing the Sunday morning banana scones, then lets up just long enough to eat them and get the tent packed – when someone up there turns the tap on. They obviously aren’t global-warming-water-conscious ‘cause they leave it dripping -- all day long.

We stop at Ebor Falls, different from the others we’ve seen because it’s split in two and its width nearly equals its length. We view it from under an umbrella after crossing a squishy green lawn that leaves our shoes wet. We spend the next few hours on a curvy mountain road in what feels like a tropical rain forest. I’m bordering on car sick from all the slow curves, but Johan’s enjoying the sport of what he calls rally-driving. I’m glad it’s him and not me behind the steering wheel.

Just past midday we pull into the only business in Nymboida, a restaurant and bar with a public toilet. As I’m relieving myself a silky female voice sings a soothing melody from above. Must be piped through the ceiling. After I button up I go around the corner to investigate. Across an empty lawn under the eaves of a lonely verandah is a solo singer sitting on a stool strumming her guitar. Across the grass, which on a sunny Sunday would be filled with people, is an undercover eating area with a few lunchtime guests quietly watching her. She’s young and fresh with a Norah Jones gutsy swagger to her ballads. Worth listening to.

We order burgers – one beef, one chicken – and join the scant audience under the eaves and out of the rain. The mighty Nymboida River rolls past down the bank where the manicured garden ends. It’s a lovely setting and good food. A nice diversion from our relentless picnic routine.

The wavy mountains give way to flat river plains as we head northeast towards Byron Bay on the Pacific Highway. After almost a week of bushcamping it’s time to locate a caravan park and get clean. The first we stop at is in a national park eight kilometers south of Byron. It’s a village of tents, each one covered with a silver tarp to ward off the rain. As we discuss the cold hard reality of setting up a tent in a crowded campsite in the pouring rain, three fisherman slog by, barefoot and wearing cheap plastic ponchos, heading to the beach with their poles jutting out from under their flimsy tarps. No one else is in sight.

We check out the next two parks. Both are packed with vans and tents, but only a few brave ones have ventured out to walk in the relentless rain. We enquire about accommodation but are told by impatient proprietors that everything’s booked out for Christmas week.

That’s it. I've had enough of this and I'm tired. And I don't want to be wet all night. When all else fails go to wotif.com – my favourite website for locating quality accommodation at cheap rates. At 5:09pm we book and pay online for a studio room at the Sunseeker Motel, 1.5kms from the centre of Byron Bay. At 5.16pm we turn into the driveway of the motel and feel relieved that it’s a nice place, reasonably new and well presented. You can never be sure with all the backpacker accommodation in this surfer’s paradise. And we only paid $125 for a private, self-contained room with a queen size bed. Cheap by Byron Bay standards.

“Did you just book?” the receptionist asks over the top of her glasses. I explain how we were sitting in a caravan park dreading the prospect of putting up a tent in the rain when we found her motel on wotif. She smiles and hands me a 20ml bottle of milk for a cuppa tea. She reads me the weather report off the internet and we both let loose a sigh of relief when we discover it’s meant to be sunny and 28˚ tomorrow.

I step into Room Number 5 and almost cry when I see a bathroom with a toilet and shower – all to ourselves! What luxury! And the room is quiet, clean and has a small verandah looking out onto a Balinese style garden with a swimming pool just behind a cluster of palm trees. We’ve lived in a tent for five weeks as of today. This little extravagance feels worth a million bucks.