99 Problems and a Seaside Silver Lining

"Cookies!" An old woman asks me. Slightly bedraggled, she carries a slender walking stick, wears a light green shawl and probably hasn't showered in a week. "Marijuana cookies or brownies?" This is the third time in a half hour I've been offered weed by a street hawker in the style of a 1940's newspaper boy. 

The small town of Nimbin makes the Oregon Country Fair look like a straight-cut prosecutor out of the prohibition. Nestled in the verdant maze of hills just south of Mt. Warning, the place is famous for hippies, weed, and a lack of concerned cops. Not that the town is geographically big, mind you: the main drag, spanning an entire two blocks, is a screaming mash-up of the outback, the '70s and modern fantasy pop whimsey. Apothacaries lie next door to Mad Hatteries, next to the town’s token seedy tattoo parlor, next to the general store, next to the tea shop (“Winter is coming… increase your circulation!”), next to curiosity shops filled with dragons and Buddhas and butterfly posters and chandeliers and VW bus cookie jars and wool leggings. Street vendors sell tie dye shawls next to Starbuds– some combination of coffee shop and brownie operation– while the town’s candle factory welcomes visitors a block down the way.

I left Brisbane late this morning in the jankiest old white ford van you could ever hope to see, straight out of 1990, sporting blingy Mercedes hubcaps. The Beast's owner, a young Dutchie named Maddie, includes a comprehensive run-down in her introduction: “Sorry I’m late; I had to replace the cable. By the way: there’s no air conditioning. And the speakers don’t really work. And the windshield wipers only work going one direction. And be careful of opening the side door all the way because it will fall off.”

... Right. Noted, noted and noted again.

After our stroll through Nimbin we roll into a backwoods pull-off for the night, and find ourselves sharing the site with the two most genuinely offensive people I've ever met. I spend the next hour staring into the fire as they carry on about how Trump and Putin would rule a perfect world, Bill Clinton is a rapist, we should expel all the Muslims and kick all the Mexicans back south of the border. Then they change tactics to, "I used to carry 14 rifles, but then that wanker had to go shoot up Port Arthur." Somewhere in the conversation, pig's blood makes a cameo. They wrap it all up by detailing backpacker murders in Northern Australia, telling me Orlando was hilarious, laughing in my face and making it clear that if we ran out of gas the next day, they'd be sure to come find us and help us out.

I wake up half way through the night to an abandoned campfire, glowing crimson logs collapsed onto the leafy ground.

Sunday morning we skip camp early and make our way to Coff's Harbour, following half-eaten back roads through national forests full of trees so straight and slender and evenly spaced you might think they had been planted. Occasional towns of ten or twenty buildings alternate with river crossing accompanied by multiple flood water depth indicators. Theoretically there's a superstorm coming in, and although we appear to have dodged the brunt of it freeway signs still warn "IF ITS FLOODED, LEAVE IT."

We roll into Coff's Harbor around midday to a roiling ocean and pounding surf. While driving rain and wind promptly snap my oft-ignored umbrella, they also insure we get to walk the harbour’s beach and pier sans company. We return to the car absolutely drenched.

Somewhere south of Coff’s Harbour, the back windshield wiper stops working. Then the Beast’s low battery indicator flares to life. We shut down the radio, turn off the lights and unplug our phones. A short time later the oil and break lights join the battery indicator. Also, the engine appears to be frying.

We pull off into a little town where a small pie shop’s big friendly giant of an owner does his best to help us out, while Maddie does her best to imitate your archetypal clueless blonde: “Do you have enough water in the radiator?” I don’t know about cars, I am a girl. BFG refills the van’s radiator, Maddie unceremoniously dumps some amount of oil into the engine, and we continue on our way.

We arrive in Port Macquarie just in time for the storm’s torrential rain and wind to arrive in earnest, booking beds for the night in quite possibly the coolest hostel I’ve ever stayed in, flip flops nailed to structural beams next to a movie room around the corner from murals and a woodstove and a pool table. While flash flood warnings inundate the news (no pun intended), Maddie tries to look under the van with a weak flashlight. My brother in Amsterdam told me I should look at the break pads… Oh, I just found my spare tire!!... Uh, right. When did you buy the van? Maybe six months ago.

The next morning the Beast greets us with a clanking rattle.

While Maddie takes the Beast into a garage I wander past a row of fishing boats and eager pelicans to Port Macquarie’s break wall. Local fishermen perch on the wall’s long stretch of graffitied rock, lines cast into post-storm swell as it crashes and rolls into the jetty. The sun  breaks onto turquoise water as my walk follows a winding seaside path along scrubby forested headlands and sandy coves accented by haphazardly piled rock. Two men at a small cliffside lookout lend me binoculars to watch southern right whales breach and spout offshore.

I detour inland to the Koala Hospital– a fully equiped wildlife rehabilitation center and the only one in the country dedicated solely to koalas. I wander amongst the permanent residents’ enclosures as they snooze the day away for the most part, although one one-eyed, one-legged gentleman makes a point of stuffing his face with all the eucalyptus as he can reach from his lazy lounge of a perch. A wild koala keeps an eye on the operation from the very top of a nearby tree.

By early afternoon, a mechanic has managed to wrangle up the necessary bolts to fix the Beast, (as well as the seatbelts, which were apparently also obsolete).

On our way out of town we make a stop by Tacking Point to visit the country’s third-oldest lighthouse, watching wind catch spray and whip it seaward from monster swells coming into land below. We spot some gray whales breaching under a spectacular neon rainbow in the clearing sky, then follow the night’s storm south toward Sydney through rolling hills and golden fields.

We roll into the city after dark and pass within ten blocks of the place I'm staying as Maddie declares she needs me to navigate to her caravan park, and by the way, I'm not driving you back into town because I'm tired and I don't like traffic.

Awesome.

Two and a half hours, a nice long walk and a double-decker train ride later, I set my bags on the doorstep, take a nice deep breath and say hello to parents of friends of friends halfway round the world from home.