Have i been Byron Bay'd?

I’ve had quite a remarkable couple of weeks. But I couldn’t tell you why.


It’s easier to believe the physicists when they say that time bends, when the eternity of blah I trudged through turns out to have been only a month, and the week since the sun rose again feels like a year at least.

Ahh, hindsight.

I do love retrospect. But when I’m feeling happy, I tend to have less use for it.

If anyone notices, they might want me to delve. What will I say this time? That this time when the see-saw jammed, I happened to be in the up position?


But it’s usually a good sign, if one can’t pin the changing of an emotional season on a particular event. Perhaps it was just time.

It did all coincide with a trip to Byron Bay. Most certainly, this was the trigger. Most certainly, even once you have the carrots and the celery and the onion and the chicken, you still need to add water for it to become chicken soup.


Along the incredibly serene and endless beaches of the shire, I ran almost every day, after not running for five, maybe six years. Some mornings I watched the sea for hours, and my mind didn’t wander too far. I went for long walks, and left my phone at home.

When it was time to fly home, I called the airline and asked for three more days. They were granted.

Shanti, Tamara and I rented this house between the river and the sea. Some nights we slept eight, some three. There were beautiful dinners and lunches, and I followed Tamara around the kitchen like a clumsy apprentice, learning how colours are just as important as tastes. I think she is a magician.

We watched the whole season of Underbelly. In two days.


One by one Team Byron departed for the airport. I was the last Mohican, staying behind to consummate the freedom of the relatively unemployed.

I moved into Byron Bliss House, and never was there an experience more aptly named.

Shanti and Tamara had mingled me in with the locals, and after they left the grassroots warmth continued. Trine cooked a beautiful dinner in her Balinese fantasy house. Mick shared his good red wine.


Yesterday as I ate breakfast at the Bayleaf I felt that warm gush of joy roll in. It had been resting there for days, but in case I hadn’t noticed, it now rose up like a wave and crashed through smiling eyes onto my deep and pebbly shores.

People notice these things. I notice them noticing.


Today as I floated through streets chatting and flirting and texting and planning, I remembered to put it all away and keep the energy inside. I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and ordered my dandelion soy latte. I put everything away, the bags, the computer, the phone, the book. I focused on the sky and the smell of my latte and the feeling in my chest.

I felt a touch of guilt rise up. It always does.

I thought, I should be locked up in a home for happy people.

Then I thought. Nah, I should be free.