Splendour in the Grass Festival and Koalas

Festival time yeah! And it was as try-be English summer festival as you can get - "gumboots" had sold out all around Byron, Ballina, probably even in Brisbane too even before the festival had begun. Hadn't even thought of the possibility of rain, so my lovely red trainers got very muddy and unsparkly. Sad smiley.

But who cares, coz we got to see loads of cool bands from Antipodea to here, including ones I already knew, like The Zutons and Snow Patrol (both brilliant), and ones I kind of knew, like Pete Murray (fabbly) and Sonic Youth, and ones never heard of, like The Presets (coolness) and Love Bus and The Grates (exy sexy). Also saw some of Wolfmother, who are supposedly "taking the world by storm", and they certainly had plenty fans at Splendour, but as you may guess from my tone, I didn't think much of. A bit too heavy metal for me. The lead singer also promised to show everyone the white unicorn if they watched the whole set, but apparently he didn't come through with the goods. Another strike against the Wolf - he's a liar!

It was something like a 14 hour drive up to Byron Bay from Sydney, not such a bad drive, but the road people want you to watch your speedometer more than keep an eye on your actual driving. Every 5 minutes there was a sign saying "speed cameras" or "what's your speed now?" or "275 drivers caught speeding last week". It was so panic inducing that everyone was zombieing at exactly 100kph, which meant that cars got bunched up on the road, then got frustrated at being behind the same car for so long, so went into the overtaking lane, even though they weren't going any faster than the car in front, and just made things far more silly and dangerous than they would be if there weren't all these stupid warnings. Why don't they do proper warnings like, "Have you checked your mirrors?" "How's your oil level?" "Are you still driving on the road or are you halfway up a eucalyptus tree now?" (And for your info it was a Toyota Corolla 1.8ltr automatic - I like automatics. And it was white)

Byron Bay itself was cool - v busy cos of the festival, but I think its pretty touristy these days anyway, despite the fact that Crocodile Dundee doesn't live there anymore. The parking attendants are certainly kept busy hunting down those happy tourists who innocently park at the side of the road for their breakfast and come back an hour later to have the smiles wiped off their faces at finding $179 (70 quid!) parking fine ticket slapped on the windscreen!!! Our greasy bacon and egg smiles slid off our faces and down to the sea...luckily we followed them there and saw the beautiful beach and the shimmering sea...and some whales! Just off the coast. So we picked up our now sandy smiles and slapped them back on again. HAHA evil parking man you underestimated the power of bacon and whales!

So we split up the ride by stopping off in Port Macquarie on the way there and on the way back, where they have the best fish and chips ever - not just fish, but prawns and oysters and mussels and lovely crispy and tasty light batter, and I'm getting used to the fact that they don't have vinegar, as lemons do a pretty good job instead.

Also in Port Macquarie we paid a visit to the Koala Hospital - where they had some ickle wickle koalas who were poorly with chlamydia or had been run over by drivers who were too worried about the speed camera warning signs to notice the koala warning signs. Didn't get to hold one, which is probably just as well, since they were disease-ridden and bleeding. The hospital was really cool though - run by volunteers who try to allow the koalas to heal just through rest, and only intervene with surgery etc when nature doesn't seem to be helping much. They also release the bears back into the wild as much as possible (well, as wild as the suburbs can be), although they had some clumsy bears that kept being readmitted so eventually they get to stay. They were all very cutesome, and it was such fun seeing them climbing up trees and sleeping and eating and doing other koala activities.

KOALA PICTURES WILL BE HERE SOON