The World's Biggest Banana and Other Exciting Things

If you visited this page over the last couple weeks, you probably didn’t see much change. Well today I plan to change that. I thought about writing the longest post ever, but will break it up over the next few days. It has been a big couple weeks down under. Just over two weeks ago I flew to Sydney. Not a lot to report from there as the weather was terrible (they got the most rain on a day in September in over 100 years) and I mostly just hung out. From Sydney a friend and I drove north to Byron Bay, where we spent a couple days.

On the drive, we stopped in Coff’s Harbour to see the famed “Big Banana” and peruse banana merchandise in the gift shop. I did not by one of these statues, but maybe I should have with current banana prices in Australia. Thanks to Cyclone Larry’s impact on the Queensland banana crop there has been a spike in prices to $16 a kilo.

Beyond the banana, we made it to Byron Bay. Byron is somewhat of a famed surf destination and has an often photographed lighthouse. Unfortunately the weather was a little rainy (note the theme), but that didn’t stop me from jumping in the ocean and doing my best (as someone who spent most of their life 1000 miles from an ocean) to bodysurf.

From Byron Bay, we continued north through Australia’s Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is Australia’s attempt to take some of the worst bits of Florida and cram it into one area. Centred around the town of Surfer’s Paradise, the Gold Coast is filled with 1970s high rises and tacky souvenir stores. We spent the day wondering through the streets and hopping into the stores to avoid the occasional rain shower. One big plus for Surfer’s Paradise in the rain was a little Turkish Restaurant called Café Istanbul. It was a nice little place and I was tempted to try out my limited Turkish vocabulary. However, after mentally reviewing what I can say in Turkish, I decided against sharing with anyone about to prepare my food.

From the Gold Coast, we headed for Brisbane, where my friend’s parents’ house would serve as our base for the next few days. The occasional showers continued throughout my stay, but there were also several hours filled with the sun that Queensland is famed for. I continue to note the rain for a couple reasons. First, it did rain (at least a little) more days than not on this trip and second, this part of Australia has been in a drought for years and has fairly serious water shortages.

Stay tuned as I will post more about Brisbane and beyond tomorrow.

-Ben