As I was packing up my stuff to leave Byron Bay on November 8, the most common response I received from those who learned about my looming departure was "why?"
The Arts Factory, a hostel and campground in Byron Bay was one of the most unique places I have called home in Australia. Although I was there for only 12 days, I spent most of my time with travelers who were putting down loose roots in Byron for a few months by living in tents on the campground and held jobs in town. It was nice to stay in one place for awhile and consistently have the same people around... even if it was for only just short of 2 weeks. Mimi, you got it just right in your facebook message when you said it appeared that I had found my way to a "hippie commune in the 60s". Except for the addition of computers, the internet, a reception desk and the election of Obama; I felt like this was exactly where I'd found myself. And I loved every second of it.
The Arts Factory may be most well known as the hostel where you can sleep in a teepee. In addition to the campground, and dorms there is a large teepee with 10 beds, a bus converted into rooms, cabins, and The Pentagon. I was a resident of The Pentagon, which was a 5 sided tent with wood floors, electricity, and 4 sets of bunk beds. But of course I couldn't help but smirk every time I was asked where I lived and had to respond, "The Pentagon."
Bus rooms
Teepee
If I had time to stay much longer in Byron I would have looked into getting a tent and staying on the campground. This campground is not the type with defined lots where everyone gets equal amounts of space and plenty of room between themselves and their neighbors. It is more like a squatter’s village or refugee camp. Tents are sometimes only a foot or so from one another. There are tarps strung from trees to shade the tents, clotheslines hung all over and bushturkeys running about stealing anything they can carry. Many people stay long enough that it is worthwhile for them to put furniture (mattresses, tables, bamboo rugs, milk crates to use as dressers, etc.) inside their tents. Most of these items are purchased or adopted from former campground residents. Let's just say I was a bit jealous that I didn't have enough time to try out this lifestyle for myself.
Campground
Cooking in the kitchen at the Arts Factory
I remetup (is that a word?) with Dan from NJ who I'd met a month earlier in 1770 and since he'd been at the arts factory for a few weeks already, he'd already gotten to know the other long termers on the campground and brought me along to bonfires on the beach and at the quarry, a Halloween party at an actual house (!), Sunday nights when the fat lady sings at the Beach Hotel, bacon cheese hamburger night with the boys, rainy afternoon movie time on the porch of Ben's tent, the 24 hour (meat) pie shop, the drum circle and whatever other craziness was going on.
Bonfire at the quarry
One afternoon I'd joined a group of people having a barbeque on a beach that required crossing from one beach to another by scrambling around the bottom of a rocky cliff over the rocks as the surf washed in and out on the low parts. We hung out there for a few afternoon hours and I FINALLY saw the ocean life that people were always pointing out but I could never spot. Three dolphins, about 50 meters from shore were swimming and jumping out of the waves. It should have been a postcard.
Byron is one of the best places in Australia to learn to surf. And so when I arrived in Byron it was time to put the money that Rachel, Greg, Linar and Mike gave me for my birthday towards surfing lessons. It was raining on the morning of the first day of the lessons but the waves were very calm -- so good for beginner surfers that our instructor said that if we couldn't stand up today we should just give up on ever being able to do it. I stood up for every wave except one. I could have used some extra instruction on how to dismount without making a fool of myself though. We were surfing quite close to shore and frequently I was still standing on the board as it road up into about 6 inches of water on the beach -- and I usually flopped off the board onto my hip or butt (or my face) like a dying fish. On the second day the weather was awesome and the waves were a bit bigger but now we were responsible for figuring out when to paddle and stand up on our own so it was a bit more difficult. I had the next day off which was really lucky because it ended up pouring all day. The following day, the weather was nice again but the rain from the day before was the result of a storm out on the pacific which meant the waves continued to be large from the storm and the tide quite strong with the water washing back to the ocean at about an 80 degree angle with the beach. The ocean battered me again and again both on my way in and on my way out. I did stand up a few times... but still couldn't figure out how to get off the board gracefully.
I was in Byron for Halloween. Apparently Canadians do Halloween like we do, but no one else does. Australians don't do decorations, pumpkins or trick r treating. It seems that their only recognition of Halloween is the occasional costume party. Which means that when about 30 of us (mostly American and Canadian) walked through town in costume on our way to a party we attracted enough attention to qualify us as a parade.
The end of Halloween was not the end of the excitement for the weekend. November 1st marked the 1st day of Movember, and there were many razor anxious guys around Byron ready to participate. Movember is an Australian and New Zealand fundraising event where guys sport ridiculous and usually creepy mustaches during the month of November. They ask their family and friends to sponsor their facial hair to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer and men's mental health. Since living in a tent with very little belongings often also means shaving is optional, there were probably more guys who removed facial hair to leave a mustache behind than those that had to start growing from scratch. There were way too many excited participants at the Arts Factory. So if my pictures appear to be full of creepy looking mustache clad characters, you now know why.
A few days after all the mustache excitement began was the day we'd ALL been waiting for... American election day. Since New South Wales is currently 16 hours ahead of EST, when the poles started to close at 7pm EST on the 4th, it was already 11am on the 5th in NSW. Sooo, election day monitoring for us happened on the 5th. This day happened to be quite rainy, which meant that rather than being on the beaches, or playing guitars on the campground or wandering about town, many people were seeking shelter on the kitchen balcony and covered area below the kitchen. Danny, from England, set up his laptop in this area and was consistently monitoring the BBC website. Grant, from Virginia, initiated the phrase, "Happy Obama Day", early that morning way before any polls had closed. Dan, from NJ, brought the celebratory beers. Claire from Canada, downloaded the acceptance speech from youtube on her laptop and a crowd of us "huddled around 'a radio' in a forgotten corner of the world" to watch. And unnamed people participated in another celebration titled "Bongs for Obama."
Throughout the remainder of the day we Americans received congratulations from Australians, English, Canadians, Israelis, Germans, and quite possibly much more. Liz from PA remarked that she was relieved because this meant that maybe she would be ok with going home again someday. Claire from Canada commented that this was a good day for Canada too because "the last 8 years for Canada has been like having a retarded siamese twin."
A few days before the election I was at a bar and an Australian woman must have heard Dan and I talking and came over and asked if we were American. She then followed this up with a phrase that was a first for my time in Australia. "I like Americans." I'm pretty sure we both looked at her with dropped jaws. Haha just kidding. I said, "Really? That's not something we hear often." She said something along the lines of, "Americans are loud. And they can be loud and annoying. Australians are loud and annoying too. But Americans have conviction. They get things done. So I like Americans." That reminded me of what the Italian girl Gulia said way back in Cairns when a bunch of us were discussing the meteorite that is predicted to come dangerously close to earth in something like 2020. She said, "I'm not worried about it. The Americans will do something." So maybe some of the world does believe there is a hope and a use for us yet. :)
View pictures at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=40994&l=0acee&id=802088251
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