Nimbin Hotel - BOHEMIAN COWBOYS

Where are the pictures?? Well when you get written-off sometimes you forget to collect your bag on the way out of the gentleman's establishment. What makes it worse is that the place of business does not open again until 9pm the next day. Luckily for me I had my wallet and work phone still on me (and a spare set of keys for the car).

I woke up the following day with small remnants of last night's fantastic $8 Chicken Parmigiana from the Metro down one side of my work pants. I was at the Brass Monkey chaffeur's place faced with a raging headache. A quick trip down to the local greasetrap started me on a little bit of recovery (+ the headache tables provided). On returning from a breakfast fit for Olympic athletes, I gathered my gear and was taxied home in the all new and improved HJ60.com - which could be heard 3 blocks away..

By this time, I had already planned a roadtrip to Nimbin - never been there and being in Australia, a 6 hour return trip is a nice relaxing afternoon cruise. To prepare for the trip, I needed tunes, because I had come to the conclusion that if it was going to happen today, it was going to be a solo mission. The "cabbie" had come good again by owning a 12V (cigarette lighter) to 240V (normal house power) converter - sK0re! - tunes are now provided for the entire trip instead of the nominal 20mins battery life my music laptop is capable of.

The trip back to get the converter in the manual Corolla was an absolute blast - nothing better than thrashing a car you have the intention of trading in soon(ish). A long chat session, a few teas and I was on my way.. back home. I needed to load some Eric B. & Rakim (*scratch* *scratch* ffffrrreeessshh) and some Streetlight Manifesto (Ska kings) for the trip. Boy, that was a good move.

Then it hit me, yes, there was a reason why I shouldn't be so sick today - I needed to renew my expired license! Yes - I drove like an absolute madman just before and yes - I potentially could have driven to Nimbin, like an absolute madman, unlicensed. Now I was in a quandry, and the day was getting on a bit. A quick lookup of Queensland Transport on the net showed that an office was not in walking distance and their online renewal crapped itself on my stock standard attempt. A mission, mindfully unlicensed, to Wynnum was undertaken - along with wasting 40 minutes of my life waiting to be served (like Voltron).

So with a renewed license and a filled-up tank of Premium, I headed south.. Leaving Wynnum at 3.30pm was really a sign of how I was not meant to see Nimbin during the day - but I gave it a genuine Aussie go. Just like the mission to Wynnum, I winged it to Nimbin - having no idea of which turn to take and how long the journey was. I made the instinctful decision to turn into Bangalow - top move. By the time I pulled into the servo, I was starving and a bit frazzled from driving at between 120 & 130 all the way from Brisso. I was shattered by the fact that the servo had ran out of meat pies, so I bought a few little treats - including a Killer Python.

It was at this point I started to be a little put-off by Nimbin, basically from a comment the attendant had made. I asked the "dude" (every servo dude is a "dude") if I have made the right turn to get to Nimbin - to my surprise he said yes and thinking back, I had made the best turn to get to Nimbin. He said to me to follow all the signs that point to The Channon (which I thought was just a trippy name for the road to Nimbin - turns out it's a township on the way). He also started to give me two pieces of advice - the first was to be careful of the road to Nimbin, it's really windy (as in lots of turns) and the second bit of advice, just before I left the servo was to (verbatim) "if you're buying something, stay clear of the Indigeneous Australians" (end verbatim) because they are very dodgy. The last comment made me question the actual conception of Nimbin I had, I thought it was going to be like Byron but more relaxed and cruisy.

The next stanza of driving between Bangalow and Nimbin was unforgettable. The road to The Channon was kickass - no speed limits, no traffic, no painted lines and in one section, no sealed road.. A road definately not for the feint hearted - however - I'd call myself a skirt from time-to-time so it wasn't a death defying road at the same time. If you own a manual and you don't mind taking it over 1km of unsealed corrugated road (which wasn't in too bad of nick) - check this road out sometime, it puts the FU into FUN.

I cruised past The Channon, it looked like a really nice place, probably where I should have stopped off for a schooner but I hardened up and kept on driving up to Nimbin. After arriving in at Nimbin, I made the decision to drive to Lismore then head back up from there because I would not attempt the road I took at night. Driving into Nimbin I saw a fair few "Street Safe cameras have been installed in this area" signs posted up all around the town centre - another offputting moment considering it was 7pm (QLD time) by the time I reached Nimbin. After eventually finding a park, I walked over to the Nimbin Hotel for the beer I said I was going to have.

On the walk to the pub, I was pretty convinced I didn't like the place - the people and the vibe didn't feel right. I am aware that it is not just a pot-smoking town - it also has/had one of the highest per-capita rates of heroin use, so that combined with other lovely drugs such as ice wouldn't bring the nicest of people together.. The drunk Aboriginals in the park didn't help out much either after hearing a woman yelling out to a bloke about why he shouldn't smash her head in..

In the pub, with my Teys Bros cap on (I thought the irony of wearing a cow-killing company's hat to Hippieville would be piss funny), I asked for a New then immediately cancelled the order when I noticed that a NSW pub had Gold on tap - sK0re!. I had to firstly shoulder my way past the coppers talking to the publican to get to the bar. With cold beer in hand, I scouted around for a place to enjoy it.. There was a country-sounding fracas coming from the other room, which had initially put me off heading in that direction, but I realised I was in the hard-arse area - no music, no spare seats, just me and every bikie in Nimbin staring at me. Hmmn, time to find a different area - so after discovering that the Bohemian Cowboys were the only area I could stand to have a beer, I lent up against a door jamb and sculled down my XXXX Gold. I was also stared at by everyone in that room as well - not an enjoyable experience - I think they were thinking about some sort of transaction.. After downing my beer, I got the flock out of Nimbin and headed towards Lismore - with the tunes crankin again.

A turnoff on the way to Lismore with "Casino - 45" written on it looked really tempting as it was the birthplace of my younger sister (NSW scum :D ), however, I wanted to get back to Brissie and chill-the-mofo-out. I fanged it back home, did "big-ups" and "shout-outs" on passing the servo at Bangalow and got to the gentleman's establishment at around 9pm - opening time. To my delight, they had my bag (containing the phone I take all the pictures with for this page) and I headed into work to pick up my gym bag - also left behind but was picked up by a work colleague.

I tried to flip this paragraph upside down using <span style="Filter: FlipV"> but because of the excessive CSS used in blogger, I couldn't work it out within 5 mins. To have read this section properly, you would have needed Firefox - otherwise you could have read this in IE off my screen the way my entire desk was on Friday. Every single item on my desk - including office chair and monitor, was upside-down. Sweet. After a quick read through of the gazillion emails that I received when I was away, I came to the conclusion that my gym bag wasn't at work and decided to pick up Maccas and a six pack. After a quick drop-in to see if I could share the happenings of the day with the HJ60 driver, I worked out that he was well and truly asleep at 10pm and made tracks for home. For the record, I did not purchase anything in Nimbin, unlike everyone else who makes the pilgrimage and I did not drink a Tooheys New from the six-pack that night. I did however, consume more than my weight in junk food that day, capped off with: Two all-beef patties, special sauce, cheese, lettuce, onion on a sesame-seed bun, medium Coke, medium fries, apple pie and a hot fudge sundae.