Destination Byron Bay: 2 Days of Travel: Day 2

      Australias: Rain-forest to desert

After an over-night rest stop in a comfy bed, I woke up in Sydney refreshed and ready for Part 2! I met Scott in the lobby of the hostel and we raced down to Central Station, grabbing some Solo's on the way down (my new favorite drink in Australia).
 Oh, Central Station. It feels like I have been there a million times! Its probably more like 10, but as the Thai would say, "same same". During the next 12 hours we rode up the eastern coast experiencing all sorts of landscapes. There was a lot of what we have already seen so much of: dried up flat fields stretching for what seems like an eternity. And ofcourse theres the fields of green wheat and gold canola. 

Luck would have it that we happened to have been assigned seats in front of the most dysfunctional family in New South Wales, apparently. This single mother was a psycho and her and her 3 spawn children terrorized the entire train for 11hours and 59 minutes of a 12 hour train ride. By the end of the line, all of the passengers had changed seats to sit as far away from this family as possible. I spent most of the ride trying to block them out using my earplugs. Originally, I brought the plugs to block out snoring people at hostels, but they have turned out to be useful for all sorts of situations!

 I did manage to sneak in a few naps despite the chaos. The children, probably between ages 2 and 6, whined, screamed and kicked the back of my seat pretty much the entire ride. The mother screamed, swore and threatened to hit them or take away their I-pods. It was so annoying. I felt like turning to her and saying "FAIL." Im pretty sure she knew she was getting a lot of stink eye from the other passengers. Anyways, enough about that!
 
On the positive side there was falafels on the train, and tea bags containing coffee. Also a nice stretch of rainforest when we passed through the Blue Mountains! Some of these beautiful mountains met the Pacific Ocean. We met a really friendly Outback Jack who told us what gave the Blue Mountains their name. Apparently it is because of the blue haze that hangs above the eucalyptus trees during mid-day!

My favorite part of the trip was when we were getting really close to Byron Bay and there were valleys of banana trees everywhere! Banana trees as far as the eye can see. From a distance you could see bags hanging from all of the trees and it was like little cloud puffs suspended in rows in the air. Farmers hang the bags over the bundles of bananas and wait for them to ripen. Once they are ready, all harvesters have to do is chop the bags down because theyre already packaged. I never knew that! 

 Arriving in Casino we transferred to another bus which took us on a one hour bus ride into Byron. We finally showed up around 9:30 pm and found a hippie-van taxi to drive us to The Arts Factory, a really famous backpacker hostel built by hippies in the 70's. We would be spending the night in a teepee....New story and pics coming soon!