5/11/06 - Sundays

Today was the day that Byron Bay showed its true colors. The past two days have been covered by a torrential downpour, a fact that threatened to ruin my entire 4-day weekend. The days were filled by watching Lost and reading The Prestige, but today, I woke up and the skies were clear and the bullfrogs were singing sweet, sweet melodies. I knew I had to take advantage of the nice weather and head into town.

With my bike once again out of commission, I started out on foot, just planning on going to get a bite to eat at the fish taco restaurant on the near edge of town, but when traffic started backing up a kilometer outside of town, it reminded me that the traveling market was in town today. I've been regularly making my trips down to the empty fields every Thursday when they have the Farmers and Organic Produce market, where I usually get strawberries and prawns, but this is one that only comes on the first sunday of each month, and on other sundays it goes to the surrounding towns.

I liked this one a lot more. First off, the farmers market is one small row of stalls, but this one took up the entire grounds, which is probably the size of a football field. All along the outside was every kind of food you could imagine. I went the burrito, chocolate-covered strawberries, and fruit shake route, but there was also sushi, pizza, and burgers. Then in the back, there was live music and a jumpoline, and a lot of tables all shoved together under tents, making it feel a lot like Oktoberfest. Everywhere else on the grounds was filled with all the arts, crafts and Che Guevara T-shirts that you'd come to expect out of a small hippy town like Byron.

Finding my room a little bit blank and dull, I found a couple different artists that were selling prints of their work, and snatched up a couple copies to spice up my walls.

As the sun continually beat down upon my neck for the 3 hour straight, I felt that it was time I got a move on out of there. I walked back home, and crashed into the beanbag chair to write this, and as I did, the skies clouded over and it's starting to sprinkle. That's the nature of Byron in the rainy season, but I'm just glad that I got to spend some time mingling with the locals while everything was bright and cheerful.