waterfalls and byron bay--saturday.

haha after a few weeks of rain and sad weekends just doing basically nothing much but shopping, we finally went on a road trip out of queensland to new south wales!

for pictures, refer facebook, too lazy to post here cos it's too slow doing one by one. haha.

okay saturday morning started out bleak, cos we were originally going to climb mount warning, but it was raining still at 8 am. so we decided to set off later at about 10+. the rain eased up at 10+ but wayne decided to bring us to springbrook national park to see purling brook falls which is one of their famous waterfalls. and we were driving up the national park and there were like clouds amongst the road making the place really foggy and stuff. but it looked really nice, reminded me of yosemite national park + genting + cameron highlands combined. so we got up to purling brooks, and took a 1 1/2 hour hike thru the forest, with those foresty muddy trials and all that, not unlike the trails we have in macritchie/bukit timah, but because it was still a little drizzly and all that, the air was really cool to the point of being cold haha. and it was really beautiful, the waterfall, cos it was raining for the past few days and like lots of water was coming down the waterfall. we also walked around the back of the waterfall to see how it was like and it was really cool. and we were all drenched! haha. and i drank the water trickling down from a rock and it was really cool and refreshing :)

after that we had lunch at this cosy little place, wayne had this irish guinness lamb stew with 2 big pieces of bread and it was nice, and zj and i had spaghetti chicken pesto with almonds and mozzerella cheese. and we shared a bowl of pumpkin soup, and all 3 of us had our own hot chocolates with marshmallows which was REALLY yummy. while we were waiting for our food, we actually played chinese checkers lol which was really like a random thing. we ashame ourselves; the non-chinese actually came in first in the chinese checkers. lol i was second :D

we went on another little trek which took about 45 minutes, and went to look at the twin falls, that trek was really interesting with many different types of 'obstacles' to pass, and things u encounter along the trail, like big rocks and all that. the twin falls was really pretty too, with more water than usual according to wayne..and yes once again we got drenched (and my phone in my pocket must have gotten as well after that it had a charging error =x) the washrooms there had 2 cubicles, and both cubicles had a spider each in it. one of it had a big spider that was black and looked dangerous, and another one had a brown spider that was like also big, but brown and hairy. we had to pick one cubicle to use the toilet, so we picked the brown one to share the toilet with cos it didn't look as dangerous as the black spider lol.

and then we started heading toward byron bay. passed lots of country road on the way..vast fields with cows and horses and mountains vaguely in the distance. it was really beautiful. i realized that i was a true blue naturalist because looking at all these sights.. really made me feel so happy. it is rather surreal and indescribable, kinda like how i felt that time in the US while aunt linda was driving us along the pacific highway there. a really blessed feeling, just felt so lucky to be seeing all these wonderful sights that God had created. we passed this place called mooball, which is a really cute name, and they had the lamp posts painted in cow colours! like white with black patches. haha. and we sang the 'i am cow' song to all the cows we saw along the way lol

we got to byron bay after sundown, and found our bunking location for the night, they had a few kitties too, one called socks as it was black with white socks, and it was much more friendly than the one at brisbane lol. we could see the turning beam of the light from the byron lighthouse in the distance. we went and took a walk around the area, went and looked at the beach a bit, experienced the nice sea breeze, looked at the lighthouse beam rotating..and then we chanced upon john boland's shop ozymex, we produce all his sauces for him, byron bay chilli co sauces..and he treated all of us each to a burrito!! :) not before we had habanero sauce and coconut chilli sauce put all over it lol. very very spicy. after that we did more wandering, and went to this pub called rails pub. and i saw my fave strongbow on tap so i drank that :) music was really loud there, talking to each other was like a shouting match. lol.

and that kinda concluded the night, we went back, showered, and here i experienced a first. i used the public shower area in the ladies toilet, cos zj needed to share my shampoo and soap and out of the 2 enclosed cubicles, one of it couldn't lock. haha. it was kinda weird.. but oh well. it's a first. after that we called it a day, talking to each other in the dark till it was kinda late and we decided to really go and slp. lol.

ok i am REALLY VERY SLEEPY. i cannot blog about sunday properly alr so i shall do that tmr. haha.