Sold on Byron
Funny place, Byron Bay. One minute I’m walking along thinking I could move here, raising mung beans and my family, and the next minute some car full of regional bogans drives past barking at a group of teenage girls, because they think the said teenage girls are dogs.
One minute I’m loving the casual pace of life, the next I’m gripping the caf?able in white-knuckled fury at the ineptitude of Byron waiters. A glass of water? That will be 90 minutes, thanks.
I was up in Byron for the Splendour in the Grass Festival on the weekend, which is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As in, you’ll probably want to do it once, and then never again for the rest of your lifetime.
If you’re like me, that is, and you’re not the rock and/or roller you find yourself drunkenly claiming to once have been.
See, now I’m in my 30s I’m a bit over standing around knee-deep in mud and spilt beer waiting for a band I don’t really like to come on. I also find myself getting quite irritated at anything I have to pay for or that I don’t (cough) have a VIP ticket for.
That’s not to say it wasn’t fun. It was crazy, funny, silly, monster fun. Especially seeing the Scissor Sisters. Less fun was waiting for the Scissor Sisters to come on.
My mates and I crammed between some enormous, stoned and mute locals for a very sweaty hour before the Sisters hit the stage for a bit of gay cabaret. Thankfully, the band also had a crack at the service speed of Byron caf?taff, so I knew it wasn’t just me turning into a cantankerous old bitch.
Weekend highlights included a visit to a Byron friend’s house, where she and her gang of girl housemates danced around the house in their undies doing lines of coke; losing my driver’s licence in a portaloo -“ and then thinking it was a good idea to get it back; and watching Brian Wilson yelling at the crowd to put its collective cigarettes out.
And a serious hangover was cured by the sun, a paddle in the beautiful ocean and a pre-noon beer, surrounded by hundreds of others who’d been at the pub since morning.
Ah, Byron. Is there anything you can’t do?
