"Down by the bay..."

We've found ourselves in Byron Bay again, if only for a brief respite from all of the sleepy little seaside villages. Byron Bay is supposed to be a young person's paradise, and in the summer I'm sure it resembles a city despite it's less than 8,000 residents. It's full of young surfers and surfer wannabes, most of whom are Australian or German. There are very few Americans here, which was a surprise to both of us.

Byron Bay was named by none other than Captain Cook, after Lord Byron's grandfather, John, who was an explorer of the time. Somewhere in history, a confused townsperson, believing the town to be named for Lord Byron himself, decided to name several of the streets after other Romantic poets--Keats, Shelley, Jonson--and the names stuck.

Today we were supposed to go on a whale watching tour, but it was canceled due to high winds. Pete was too bitter to drag around his camera, so I decided to take some pictures while we walked along the bay. Here's a picture of the cape--you might be able to see the lighthouse if you look closely.


We encountered a lot of jellyfish that had washed ashore, and this was the most intact of them all.
It looks small, but it was actually about a foot and a half in diameter.

This blue thing we assumed to be a jellyfish as well, but it turns out that it's a Portuguese Man O' War. There were actually a lot of them dotting the shoreline. This one was twitching. The bubble-like structure is a "sail" full of carbon dioxide that the Man O' War uses to stay afloat.

Tonight we're staying in a hostel along the main beach in Byron Bay, and tomorrow we're heading to Brisbane.