First, a piccy. This cute little Ukulele was given to me today by my completely awesome parents. I have started singing a fair bit, and wanted to learn an easy instrument to accompany me. A couple of people suggested that I learn the ukulele, so when Dad saw this purple one up at The Planting Festival (was held this last weekend at Woodfordia - the Woodford Folk Festival site), he just knew he had to buy it for me. I am so excited. I have already been online and learnt a few easy chords and am picking up a learners manual in town tomorrow. I had thought to teach myself guitar, but was finding it too difficult for some reason, but this is great.
Mum and Dad giving me this uke has topped off an amazing weekend. On Friday, my friend Naomi and I took off on a 4 day, 3 night road trip. We had one plan: To go to Mullimbimby to go to "the Crystal Castle" and to Ballina so we could go to Thursday Plantation. After that, we just went wherever we felt led.
So Friday started off with us leaving at about 9:00am. We got to Mullimbimby at about 10:30 or 11:00am. We had a good look around, had a lovely lunch then had more of a look around and shopping. Naomi bought quite a few crystals as well a beautiful Sugerlite stone and silver bracelet that she gave to ME!! (it is sooo pretty). We also had photos of our Auras taken which was a very interesting and amazing experience. They seemed to be so spot on, it was uncanny. One of my spirit guides or angels even showed up on mine, so that was awesome.
From Mullumbimby we headed down to Ballina where we got a room at The Slipway Hotel (I keep on wanting to call it the "Slipway Inn" - think about it) for the night. Once we had settled in and I'd had a bit of a nap (Naomi went for a wander in the main st while I rested) we went to find something to eat. The food and atmosphere at the Slipway didn't really entice us, so we decided to wander down the street to see what else was available. We ended up going into one of the other pubs (The Australian Hotel) where we had another awesome meal and listened to live music by Birdie, the lead singer of a band called The Quiet Excitement. During the evening we got talking to some of the locals, including the owners of the pub and (during his breaks) Birdie himself. Much fun, laughter and singing was had. Once we were finished there, we headed back to our room to plan our next days movements and go to bed.
On Saturday morning we had a couple of hours to spend looking around town before the Thursday Plantation was due to open, so we had a leisurely breakfast in a local cafe, then went to East Ballina to see the coast line and beach. At East Ballina we found this old cemetery on the headland, so we quickly pulled over and went for walk through, looking at some of the graves. The view from the cemetery was amazing. Once we finished there, we drove further along the headland to the lookout, where we spent quite a while just looking up and down the coast and gazing out at the sea.
When it got to about 9:45am, we headed back to north/west Ballina to the Thursday Plantation. We had a wonderful time walking through the maze, the rainforest walk and the shop. All around the plantation grounds are sculptures and artwork. Some really good, some really obscure but kind of cool (like the door in the middle of the rainforest path, the skeleton made of metal found in the maze, and the pillars of breasts at the start of the maze), and the completely eyebrow raising "artwork" that almost anyone could do, even a ten yr old, but cost a mint.
The plan after the plantation visit was to drive across through Lismore and then up to Nimbin for a leisurely saturday lunch, wander and shop. Unfortunately, as we arrived into Nimbin, we saw a big sign saying "Nimbin MardiGrass - This weekend!". Oh, shit.... There were people (and police) everywhere. Naomi doesn't do crowds well, and I wasn't keen on being involved at the mardigrass, so we decided to just drive through the main street. We pulled into the carpark at the Nimbin Candle Factory on the other side of the town, and had a nice quiet time looking at the candles, getting a tour and taking the chance for a loo break. We were thinking we might have lunch there, but as it was obvious they were only selling Vegan food, we decided to keep moving and see what we could find further along the road.
So, we got back in the car and headed further north, then west heading towards Kyogle. About 1/2 way between Nimbin and Kyogle, we stopped at a tiny locality that I can't remember the name of and had another lovely meal of meat pies and salad at the shop/ postoffice/ cafe/gallery. Then we kept on driving all afternoon - first to Kyogle, then down south to Casino. At Casino, we stopped into a motel that I'd been to before with Lachlan and asked for a twin room. Unfortunately there were none available, so we decided to head due west to Tenterfield as it was only about an hour away and we were planning to go there the next day anyway and it was still reasonably early in the evening (about 4:30pm or so). The trip to Tenterfield, although lots of glare because of the sun setting in the west, was one of the most beautiful legs of the whole weekend. Just glorious!
It's about 9pm now when I'm writing this, and I need to go to bed now, so I'll stop for the moment and write of the Tenterfield "Experience" (because an experience it was!) and the following two days tomorrow. Sorry to leave you hanging, but come back tomorrow evening for the next installment! LOL.
