Our trip down the East coast of Australia | Byron Bay, Mullumbimby.

Elisa.
Oct 12, 2018
2 min read

After wonderful time in Burpengary and Australia Zoo, we rented a car for our road trip. Our plan was to pick up the car in Brisbane and drive all the way to Sydney. We have rented cars before, but this was the first time when we wanted to drop it off in a different location. In this case even in different state. So we spent at least three days browsing every home page possible to find a reasonable price. The car rent itself for 7 days was very good. Around 100 - 150 AUD. The problem was the fee for dropping it in another location. Fee for that was 450-600 AUD (plus the rent itself), depending of the company. At our last night we finally find offer at Thrifty for 450 AUD including fee. That was our only option.

I definitely learned my lesson - always start and end your trip at the same place if you want to rent a car. But "What's done is done you just leave it alone and don't regret it".

We wanted to see the Byron bay, famous for it's weed smoking hippie community, nice beach and chill atmosphere. As we couldn't find a host there we found Mark in a close town called Mullumbimby. I find this name very odd and funny. The name "Mullumbimby", meaning "small round hill", was given to the district by Aboriginal people.

First we discovered Cape Byron and it's lighthouse. The lighthouse sits on Australia's most easterly point.

Big was our surprise that everywhere we had to pay for parking. Even on streets out of the center. That day we spent almost 30 dollars just on parking. After the lighthouse we decided to see the city. The beach was nice and the atmosphere was really relaxed. There was a lot of stores selling bohemian style clothes. People were chilling in the grass or sand and listening live music.

Despite all that, I would say that Byron bay is really overrated. As a traveler, I have seen plenty of beaches and relaxes towns, but here parking was way too expensive, as well as cafes and restaurants. I would call it a tourist trap. I still think that this place was once a real hippie happy place and just because many people came here to see that, the locals started to use that. It's not a bad thing, just for me I didn't really see what's so special about the place, that I should spend that kind of money for parking or food. Other than that, the town is quite nice.

After a nice evening drinking Sauvignon Blanc with Mark, next day we continued our road trip along the East coast. The further inland we were the most devastation we saw. The drought is a really serious problem for all the farms. Poor animals are dying without water.