Day after the reservoir walk, I was off to the much talked about Arts Factory hostel, in Byron Bay. The OzBus picked me up and we were headed for the morning's activity...Zorbing! It sounds ominous, and involves hopping inside a large translucent rubber ball and rolling down a hill! It was great fun, if a little short-lived.

The Arts Factory was a small hippy hostel founded in the 70s, and since then has expanded to become one of Australia's greatest backpackers! It has everything you could want...hot tub, sauna, swimming pool, large, clean room, friendly staff, a good kitchen, cheap cafe, cinema (!!!), bike hire (for $7 a day...more later!), hammocks, board games, reading room, the list goes on, and on, and on and on!

I met up with Jack, Dean and Laura who I'd planned to meet there a few days before, and we spent the rest of the day chilling in the hot tub and drinking goon! The next day, I went to the one and only Nimbin. It's a small town 70km west of Byron Bay, and is a seriously weird place!

A brief history; Nimbin was originally a small dairy farming community when in 1973 aq group of students chose Nimbin as the site for their new alternative hippy festival, named the "Aquarius Festival". Many of these hippies (as you can expect) were using marijuana, and after the festivals they would simply stay put in Nimbin, and form their own little communities. As Nimbin is now, Marijuana is as near as you can get to being legal, but is still illegal in the state of New South Wales.

Marijuana can be bought from sellers down the street, cookies, cakes and chocolate too. All this goes on, with some kind of exemption from the Police. There is actually a Police station in the village, how mad is that!?!? This place was unique, to say the least.

The tour took me to Nimbin, and Jim (the tour guide) told us many fascinating stories and took us on some rollercoaster driving trails! It was absolutely mad, but a good laugh none the less.

The next day, Jimmy (a friend we met there), Laura, Dean, Jack and I hired some bicycles! It was one of the best days of my trip! I was lucky enough to be dealt the cool card, and had a Harley Davidson type bicycle arrangement. It was amazing...dude! We cycled up to the lighthouse, which is the most Easterly point in Australia. From the point there, we saw stingrays and turtles in the sea below! Unfortunately, the bike had only one gear, so the ascent was pretty tough going.

That night, we made full use of the cinema and also cooked ourselves a fantasmic curry (the curry worked out at 1quid per person, the lady gave us too much change...quids in!). In addition to this stroke of luck, we also got a free cinema ticket as the lady serving us was just silly.

The next, we said our goodbyes to Jimmy and Laura, and Jack, Dean and I headed for Surf Camp. This is a special stop off for OzExperience customers where you learn to surf in a secret beach (ie. no real surfers there to make us look bad). I managed to stand up a few times long enough to scream "I'm Surfing Baby, yeah!".

This was this morning, and after a whopping drive we finally arrived in Sydney. I'm back here after 80days and it all feels very odd. Time has gone by so fast, I can hardly believe it's time to go home!