Honeymoon 2007 style

We did a lot of forward planning for our honeymoon. We needed a car: a quality car, an economical car, a safe car, a four-door hatchback car. After a bit of research, we came up with the obvious best choice - VW Polo TDI. (turbo diesel injection). We decided, for our honeymoon, to point it North, and give it his head (it was a male car at this time)



Here is a brief snapshot from our honeymoon to the north-eastern part of New South Wales - lifted from a letter Paula sent to an overseas friend (with her permission) and edited and embellished by me,
We headed towards the Rainbow region (our old stomping ground) about half way up the east coast and getting into the warmer sub-tropical part of Oz. They grow sugar cane and bananas and coffee up there!

It's called the Rainbow Region because a lot of hippies moved up there in the early seventies after the seminal Aquarius Folk Festival at Nimbin Village in 1973. A thriving series of alternative communities sprang up and survive to this day. I was there altho' Paula didn't go. I actually bought into one of the communes that was set up there in the lush valley, next to the town of Nimbin. It the first (and now the biggest) commune called Co-ordination Co-operative. The deal was, to become a member, you paid $200, which gave you the right to claim enough land to set up a dwelling, and grow as much food as you wanted to. It was an offer too good to refuse.

Paula spent some time in the nearby village of Mullumbimby - another alternative community base - during her driftings and roamings in the late seventies ( She spent the greater part of the seventies way down south on the island state of Tasmania and in South Australia).

Paula and I were friends for a time in the seventies but a relationship never developed as such (she wasn't Paula then). We never journeyed together up to the Rainbow Region then, so for our honeymoon we decided to make up for that and take the road trip we never had.

If we'd have gone in the seventies we'd have done it in a trusty old Beetle (one of six I owned up to the eighties) or Kombi (I owned 3 of those) or hitched and lived out of a pup-tent. Middle-age has caught up in the subsequent 30 years and we opted for our new little Vee Dub Polo diesel which with its fold down back and economical mileage was perfect for such a trip. We also stayed in motels. We didn't book and tended to take the lower end of the market but it was great to have a decent bed and shower, not to mention TV and a cuppa at the end of a long day's driving! We both would have viewed that as totally decadent and beyond the pale once!

Despite it being the school holidays we never had any problems getting a room. We'd just work out a ballpark figure of where we'd get to by about 5pm and pick a suitable destination around that point as our overnight stay. We'd researched some possible motels on the web before we left but apart from that would just let serendipity find us a home for the night.

Each day we'd stock up on good wholegrain bread, fresh tomatoes, tahini, bananas and dried fruit plus thermos for tea and coffee and cold water and fresh milk in our little esky. We had a couple of flexible cooler "bricks" which we'd freeze each night in our motel fridge. We made good use of all the roadside rest stops they have these days to stretch our legs and have a picnic lunch and cuppa (and use the toilet!). Dinner each night - if we were tired was more of the same - but most times we'd go out to dinner at a local low priced (usually) restaurant or cafe - Thai, Indian, organic, pizza.
These days each town or regional centre also has an excellent Information Centre which was a great place to find out local information plus get maps and brochures, use the toilet, soak up some air-conditioned cool and browse/buy arts and crafts. Oh! how resources have improved since the seventies! None of that back then! You had to pee behind a tree and ask for directions at the "cop shop" (police station) - altho' you can imagine how popular hippies were with them!

We saw such beautiful sights, such beautiful country - of all types - mountains, hills, ancient standing stones and rocks, lush sub-tropical tree-arched winding country roads heady with green ripe smells; rainbow flags and totems everywhere, ancient white-haired hippie veterans and a bright new self-possessed alternative generation, macadamia and pecan and coffee plantations, indigenous centres, alternative markets (home-made or home-grown only!), sleepy small wooden-walled, tin-roofed villages, bustling regional cities (with 10 minute peak hours), huge exotic Hindu temples (many Sikhs own and work the banana plantations); broad sweeping northern rivers plied with fishing fleets and lined with Jacaranda trees in brilliant mauve bloom. Oh! And wide, wide skies above a wide, wide land!


By chance (? nah!) along the way in two different towns I met up with two guys I knew from my organic bakery days twenty years ago!
One guy had followed my lead in Sydney and opened up an organic (sour dough) bakery and cafe in Lismore. His Goanna bread is available in Sydney. Lismore was like home for us - a really nice city.

We got as far as Brisbane, capital of Queensland (next state up) where Paula does business trips sometimes. We stopped off where she used to live in Brisbane for a while at one time in the late seventies and then met a girlfriend from work for lunch up on Mount Coot-tha which has spectacular views of the flat river-plain city of Brisbane. (unfortunately the food was the worst we had on our whole trip). We even managed to squeeze in a river-cat ride up the Brisbane River through the city and waterside suburbs in our one day and two nights sojourn there before heading back to the Rainbow region.
We got there in time for the fabled markets at the Shannon. I always used to hear about them, but never went in my earlier hippy incarnation. Today they draw in some 10,000 people from all over the Rainbow region (held once a month). It was a highlight of our trip.


All up we were away for 12 wonderful tiring but soul-restoring days.
see many more pics in flikr - use link on left!

WE WON

Well we did it finally, all we needed was a creditable leader, and a dopey Govt. leader. If Turnbull was made leader early enough (he will become leader within a year) then Libs would have still lost, but not with such a crushing margin.