The First Leg

We left Brunswick Heads on Monday May1, and drove south to Byron Bay, where I had an appointment to meet with Soils expert Paul Taylor. He had taught a half day at our PDC, and was interested in what I could teach him about microscopy.  We broke camp and headed down to Byron Bay with time to spare before the 1:30 appointment, as we were experiencing the first sunny day since before leaving The Channon. So we were able to get a couple hours of beach time in before heading to meet Paul at a nice little cafe on the 'main drag' in BB.

Not knowing what to expect, we had eaten fish tacos a bit earlier, so we sat with Paul and shared a wonderful tiramisu and lattes. Then it was off to his "lab", in the lower level of a house he owns in town. We were met there by Kane, Paul's assistant and a classmate in Shawn's 2010 Zaytuna internship. He had a nice light microscope, a selection of slides and coverslips, and samples of some of the compost tea/biofertilizer solutions that he has developed. It was clear that his main interest was impressing students/clients with showing Life as Motion in his preps. (Movement is not the only, or even a good measure of the amount of life in a sample. Many living microbes don't show visible motion.) I was able to show him a couple of ways to make better slides from uneven/non-homogenous materials containing chunks of organic material-- a method of smear prep used in making thin film blood smears worked well with the chunky dirt solutions. Kane seemed a bit more interested in the actual microbiology side of things. I promised to get back to them both on the potential identity of a weird tri-chambered yeasty-looking thing we saw in the latest biofertilizer, as it was virtually the only organism visible. (I need to look that up!) They are not overly concerned with *what* is growing, as long as it is alive and not anaerobic. Clearly I need to do a bit more research into soil micro!

We made a later than anticipated departure from Byron Bay, so only made it as far as Grafton by dark. We decided to stay in a motel and rest up a bit in anticipation of a couple of big driving days coming up. We found the Bent Street Motor Inn near the highway we were on. It was a nice place, with a restaurant and parking under the room balconies. We had a nice dinner and a good sleep and, most importantly, showers. In the morning we looked for a camp store in town as well as a place for breakfast. It was a bust on the camp supplies, but we found a lovely middle-eastern themed cafe and had a spectacular breakfast before walking back to the motel and hitting the road. After driving a bit, we found a nice shopping center in Coff's Harbor, and stopped to pick up some supplies. We were specifically looking for a camp table and chairs, but only found some super cheap folding camp chairs.


Our next day's driving took us further down the coast, through small and smaller oceanfront towns. The road was curvy and hilly, through eucalypt forests with regular ocean views and a bit of traffic. Looking at the map to find a stopping point for the night (before dark this time) we settled on Hat Head National Park, near a town called South West Rocks. The park was rough camping in the woods, looking like a mix of eucalypt forest and rainforest. There were a couple tents pitched and it wasn't clear where the sites began and ended. Because it was wet we decided to set up the big tent, in a fairly private location. We could hear the ocean waves as we set up camp, and hurried off down the trail towards the beach before darkness fell. The little trail opened up suddenly to a lovely cove.

Hat Head beach trail

With the clouds and darkness falling, our time on the beach would be limited, but it was certainly beautiful. There were only a couple other people there at all, two who were fishing off the rocks below the lighthouse. We walked along the edge of the waves to the rocks and back to the trailhead before it got too dark to find our way back to camp.

toward the rocks

From the rocks

We had a dinner of cheese, crackers, sardines and wine in our new chairs under the shelter of the tent vestibule. It doesn't sound as nice as it was. :)

Come morning, Shawn got up early to go for a run on the beach. Later, as we were breaking camp, we noticed several curious visitors nearby. It was a family of Wallabies; a mom, and two offspring, one bigger than the other. The youngsters came very close by and were unperturbed by our activity.

Shawn and new friend

Mom stayed a little further away, until a while later, after the kids had moved past our site. Suddenly she hopped right up to Shawn and stood facing him, as if to say, "well, where are they?" He stepped aside and she hopped on past.

Once on the road, we made a stop in Kempsey at a shopping center to get a few more things we needed. There was a barber shop with walk-ins and Shawn decided to get his shaggy hair cut. I bopped around in search of a restroom ("toilet" in Australia), which was surprisingly difficult to find. Once that was taken care of, I wandered into a store called "Crazy Clark's" which turned out to be a "Big Lots" or "Rejects" type place. There I just happened to find the exact camp table we wanted, for $30. I also just *had* to try some of the more oddly-flavored potato chips I had ever seen, amongst all of the meat flavors they had. (They were awesome by the way.)

Later that day, we arrived at Purple Pear Farm, a "biodynamic" Permaculture farm near Maitland, where we planned to stay and WWOOF for a few days. Good thing I got the junk food out of my system!