Byron Bae

“Hello, I'm from the UK and I'm backpacking around Australia and I love Byron Bay!” Said every tourist ever. Including me.

Well, I've been in Australia for two weeks now and I've made a decent dent in the list of touristy stereotypes. I've fed a kangaroo, cuddled a koala, drank copious amounts of goon and fallen a tiny bit in love with Byron. But let's not get ahead of ourselves shall we.

i. Jet lag
Good lord this was disgusting. Having never done a long haul flight before, I was filled with optimistic naivety, assuming that I wouldn't be effected simply on the basis that I was me and I'd told myself it wouldn't be an issue. As cramped and uncomfortable as spending 24 hours in ‘super economy’ was, the discomfort didn't come close to what I experienced over the next few days. Anyone who knows me would agree that sleepy and hungry were two reasonably accurate ways to describe me, so the shock of sleeping two hours a night and hardly consuming a single meal whilst in Brisbane was horrifying. As a result of this, Brisbane admittedly sort of passed me by in an irritable, confused haze. All I can tell you about the city is that there's free city wide wifi (21st century description of beauty right there) and that the South Bank was pretty decent. Sorry Brisbane, I'll try again when I feel more like an actual human person.

ii. Hot England
From Brizzy I moved slightly further south to the Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise to be exact. With my first full nights sleep proudly accomplished I headed off to the beach in an attempt to transform my very British milk bottle white legs, to something that more resembled a caramel shake. I will point out here that my knowledge of Australia is/was pretty limited, but I had made the assumption that there would be some Australians here. I was wrong. In my room alone there was eight of us Brits, delightful. Adding to my initial confusion was that Surfers appeared to resemble a sort of cleaner, hotter Blackpool. The iconic seaside tower rubbed out and replaced by great monstrous skyscrapers that loom over the beach ominously and donkey rides swapped for hoards of American Au Pairs trotting their gaggle of children up and down the beach. I would just like to point out that I did actually end up having a good time there, I met some really lovely people and it worked as quite a nice base to travel to further town and beaches (Burleigh Heads being a personal favourite). It was however a culture shock, in the sense that the culture was no different to my own.

iii. Barefoot, acoustic guitar playing hippies
Even before I got to Aus people were telling me to go to Byron, this intensified ten fold when I actually arrived. I would never in a million years describe myself as a ‘hipster’ yet we do share several traits, I like my fancy camera and drinking from mason jars, I have a blog and if someone tells me I'll love somewhere, I actively seek out reason to loath it. It was with an arrogant air and an already negative attitude that I went to Byron Bay. Stepping off the bus I was greeted by a barefoot man wearing tie die and playing an acoustic guitar, my eyes rolled so far back in my skull that I'm pretty sure I saw my corneas. “How stereotypical. I've been here 5 minutes and it's already far too mainstream for me.” It wasn't until a few days later when a group of us had gone to wash some music that it clicked. The dace floor was full of people, every sort of person, old, young, posh, bogan, hippy, traveller, local, all together, all happy. No judgment was passed from any group of people, everyone was there to listen to the music and that was all that really mattered.

So now I write this on the beach, after spending last night wearing a tie die jumpsuit and listening to reggae, and without a pair of shoes in sight.

You may call me Grace: Queen of the barefoot hipsters.

The Countdown Begins

I'm back! Well I never really went anywhere, and I suppose that's been my problem since I came back to England, but I'm back not being back…

Seeing as my last post was an unforgivable amount of time ago, I'll recap how things ended for myself and my European adventure. Through the genius that is Workaway, I managed to get myself a very lovely job working at a fabulous hostel in Bratislava, Wild Elephants. Responsibilities included checking guests in and getting them drunk. Which really was a dream, but as with most things, money gets in the way, and a lack of it more so. So with a pitiful 19p in my bank account, and the heaviest of hearts, I returned home.

I'll give you some context about my hometown, a recent article in The Guardian by Mike Carter on Brexit (don't even get me started on my rage/embarrassment about that whole façade) sums up Nuneaton in a description as accurate as it is depressing. “Nuneaton, the home town of George Eliot and Ken Loach, had more charity shops in its high street than anywhere I’ve ever seen. And some of those charity shops had closed down. What does it say about a town when even the charity shops are struggling?”

Now, I don't want to seem heartless here, it was so wonderful to give my parents a long anticipated cuddle, catch up with all the people who had made my life here complete and meet my lovely new god son. It really was. I adored the small things as well, having multiple pillows on my bed, being able to leave my shampoo in the bathroom without it getting pinched and the knowledge that I had more that two outfits, but inevitably things began to feel much the same as before I left.

I woke up, went to work, went to the gym, came home. Repeat. Maybe on a weekend I'd spend all the money I'd earned that week in the one, very questionable, night club our town has, but that's about the long and short of it.

Sometimes people would ask about travelling, and at first I was so keen to inspire others to travel, but even that wore very thin very quickly. Every time my stories of the magnificence of being really and truly free fell on deaf ears or were reciprocated with a bemused smile and an elongated silence, I lost another part of where I'd been, what I'd achieved. So in the end I stopped answering questions with anything more than a “yeah, it was good thanks” which seemed to satisfy. Then suddenly, I woke up. I mean properly woke up, and four months had passed. In this time I'd found myself both made redundant and promoted in a new job. The mundanity that made up my everyday life had seemed acceptable, however it promptly became an obscene elephant in every room I entered. So the frantic saving began.

At first I wasn't entirely sure what it was I was saving for, Australia floated around in the back of my mind like a hazy, unachievable, dream. I could (should) learn to drive, I could (shouldn't) get a flat, there were plenty of things I could/should/shouldn't do with this money. However, somewhere deep inside me, I knew what it was for, but the idea and the reality were two very different things, and the reality was overwhelmingly enormous.

And then it was August. Eight months had passed. I'd been back as long as I'd been away and that really was a horrific sensation.

Something inside me needed to go again, and needed to go quickly. The same primal sense of running free that I’d had last year came back and I hit me like a truck. It tore my world apart and threw me into a free fall, I simply could not go on living how I was.

 With a sense of déjà vu, I quit yet another job and booked yet another one way flight and rescued my lovely backpack from the attic. Somewhat further afield this time, Brisbane, Australia but I guess it's a similar premise to before though. Hostels and backpacks and long ass busses and washing my pants in sinks. And I can't wait!

Two weeks Aus! Be prepared, because I’m not.