LISMORE / GOONELLABAH

Nestled between the rain forest and the sea in the Northern Rivers of NSW, 45 km inland from Byron Bay and 100 km south of the Gold Coast, Lismore is the cultural and economic capital of the Northern Rivers region.

After leaving MIke's house we set out for a long days drive. By this stage in our travels Bella had become quiet a nomad, she was now getting used to the routine of meeting strange people and their pets, staying with them for a week and then moving on. I am quiet surprised how she has adapted to this UN-settled lifestyle we are currently living.

Our next stop was to visit and stay with another friend Adrianne. I shared a house with her in Bronte when I first immigrated to Australia back in 1994. Adi lives in this really small little house on a nice big lot with lemon, mango, and other fruit trees all over the place, a little over grown but just a really nice place. When you needed herbs to cook with you could just walk out into the yard and pick them. At the bottom of the garden there were these huge River Red Gums and Swamp Mahogany trees. Adi often see's a local Koala living in them, i was dying to see him/her, but was not as lucky.

The few days i spent with Adi i took a few drives around, my first would be to a coastal town called Ballina. We drove there for the day just to have a look around, nothing much there to see apart from the huge Prawn that i missed getting a picture of. Anyhow, we drove through the small town and headed north looking for a dog beach for Bella to stretch her legs and have a good swim. We ended up at Lennox Head which was a nice stretch of beach with a few cafe's and coffee shops, mixed in between surf shops and a great fish and chip shop. We found the dog beach and had fun playing in the waves. On the way back to Adi's there were people paragliding off of the headland. We stopped and watched people launching themselves into the air and flying directly above. Bella was quiet intrigued by the humans taking to the air and flying like birds.

After that we started heading back to Adi's house and the car started loosing power, all of a sudden I started thinking the worst. I had just bought this car and now it was starting to break down. I pulled over at the north end of Ballina and there was all this steam pouring out from underneath the hood/bonnet. I lifted the hood and all this hot radiator fluid was spraying every where, i had to get out of the way really fast.

This was the last thing i needed while making my way up the coast, i did not have the money to have my car towed to the dealership and repaired, neither did i have any tools to fix the problem myself. When the water had stopped spraying all over the place i found out that a heater hose had split and thus caused this problem. I took a photograph of the hose and called a taxi. Bella and i jumped into the cab and went to the only Nissan dealer in town, the only problem was they did not have the part. They rang around for me and nobody in Ballina had the hose i needed, plus all the mobile mechanics i could get hold of were too busy to help me out. I decided i would walk back to the car and along the way purchase a few tools and take the hose off, then take it to the nearest REPCO store and try and match up the hose with what ever they had in the store. While walking back to the car, which was about 8 kilometers away, i saw this guy sitting in his station wagon. On the side written in black marker pen was Mobile Mechanic. I stopped and started chatting with this guy, he was on vacation from Melbourne and ended up helping me get my vehicle up and running again. If it was not for this kind man, i do not know what i would of done, daylight was running out and we ended up swapping out the hose in the dark, i gave him $150 for helping me and we both went our separate ways.

WOW, how lucky i was...

The following day Adi took me to a near by town called Bangalow for lunch, not a very large town but it has an historic streetscape. Due to it's close proximity to Byron Bay, it has become a popular tourist destination for holiday-makers and day-trippers as it's main streets are lined with modern cafes and boutique shops. Organic produce grown nearby are a regular feature in the cafes.

#Travel #Beach