Byron Bay Birthday

At the tender age of 17 I went through a serious phase of style psychosis. I believed, with all my being, that I looked AMAZING when I wore a men's corduroy shirt, steel toed construction boots (purchased second hand, and about 3 sizes too big), and a crocheted Rasta beret.  You know, the bright red/yellow/green ones that are meant for Carribean men to be able to stuff their dreads in.  I did not get the memo that they were not intended for 5 foot nothing white Jewish girls with stick straight hair. As I tripped my way around town (those boots were MASSIVE on me), I thought I was miss THING.  Luckily, I was well equipped to weather the disaster, having  made it through the safety-pin-tapering era and the bleach-brand-new-jeans-till-they-nearly-disintegrate period relatively unscathed. 

My poor mother.  Good on ya, mom, that's all I'll say.  I hope I'll be as calm if I have to stand back and watch Little J destroy a brand new pair of pants by chopped them up and pinning them back together some day.

I suppose things have changed just a bit, now that I'm 36.  But the dreadlocked rasta still resides in me somewhere.  And so, in celebration of my birthday this year, we made the pilgrimmage to Byron Bay, a beach town just south of the Gold Coast.  Byron is one of those places whose reputation preceeds it.  It started out as a hippy hamlet on a gorgeous stip of beach, and although it's pretty commercialized now (and super expensive), it has managed to maintain much of that alternative spirit.  The moneyed set may come to visit, but, like, they're not really experiencing it, man. To do that, you need to be one of the stinky, bearded van dwellers who congregate in Byron to surf and have their chakras healed.  I so would have taken up with them back in the day.

M. was a rockstar driving us there in a car with the steering wheel on the opposite side, and on the wrong side of the road.  He even navigated highway  roundabouts, and only turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal about 10 times.

Our weekend there was less idyllic weather wise--it literally poured, and I mean POURED buckets of rain, from pretty much the moment we arrived, until about an hour before we left.  We stayed in a fun tiny little cottage, and rather than let the rain spoil our entire weekend, we decided to just accept it, be silly, and have a great time anyway.  We went for drives to see the gorgeous countryside, visited the famous lighthouse (the most easterly point in Australia), and ate some of the best food on this trip.  It really was a special weekend, and I feel so lucky to have shared it with my sweet little family.