De Escape

Salam to all,

Today is the last day of my long weekend. I will be back at work tomorrow while the other students have the whole week off for their mid semester break. Oh how I miss being a student (even though I’m still one now). I miss the long holiday where I can travel and see other places.

By the way, I just got back from a 2 days trip down south to Northern part of New South Wales. It was kind of last minute plan actually as me and Hana was planning to go to Sydney. But the flight was too expensive and we had our proposal submission this coming Wednesday made us ditch that plan. Then my housemate, Mia was planning a trip up to Sunshine Coast. Though I’ve been there couple of times already but as I want a getaway I might as well follow her. I don’t want to be stuck at home alone on a long weekend. It’s gonna be so boring. So, the plan was to go up north but again as I was a last minute plan, there was no accommodation for us up there. So we changed the plan to go south instead.

We started the journey on Friday morning. Picked up the car from the rental companies and started heading south. The first stop should be Byron Bay but our pilot missed the junction so we thought of going there the next day on our way back. So, the first stop was actually Ballina. This is where we had our official greetings to each other (there were 2 cars in this trip). We stopped at the info centre in Ballina to grab some maps and brochures and then had lunch near a so-called-lake.

 at Ballina, NSW

 The next stop of the journey is Amaze n Place in Alstonville. After that we head to the house with no steps. There’s nothing there actually but we did took some pics with the giant chess there. This is actually a place to support the disables, so by going there we are showing our support to them.

 Amaze n Place (top) and house with no steps (bottom)

Then we were supposed to head to Grafton but it was still early, so we decided to stop at Evans Head. Evans Head is a beach area that is so beautiful. The scenery was breathtaking, I felt so small when I think how Almighty Allah is. Seriously I could just stay there all day watching the waves and the sea. There were also a couple of people there that was fishing. They were a lot of fishes and one of them even caught a ray. We stayed at Evans Head till sunset and then made the journey to Grafton where we settled for the night.

 Evans Head

The next day started with an unfortunate event. We realized that our tyre was flat. The thing is we don’t even know what caused the tyre to be that way.

 fixing the tyre

We assumed that we must have run over something sharp along the way and it inflates during the night. Once we got that settled, we head down to Coffs Harbour. On the way there, we took the coast road that has a really nice view of the sea. As we can’t resist the view, we stopped at Pelican Beach  (if I;m not mistaken, that's the name of the beach) to take some photos. 

 

Next stop is the famous Big Banana and The Clog Barn. The Clog Barn is a miniature of a Dutch village. So, for those who haven’t been to Holland, you can go to this place and claim that you’ve been to Holland.

Big banana (top) and Clog Barn (bottom)

But, the best part of that day was the Historic Jetty at Coffs Harbour. The view was fabulous and I wished that I can float so that I can join the people that did jetty diving. On our way back from Coffs Harbour we stopped at Byron Bay for sunset. This was another breathtaking view. Seriously indahnya ciptaan Allah.

Top: Coffs Harbour Jetty, Middle: Lighthouse at Byron Bay, Bottom: Sunset at Byron Bay

The 2 days trip flew by so quickly I wished we stayed there longer and had the time to go a inland to Armidale and Dorrigo which is classified as world heritage. So, the scenery from there must be really beautiful. I really want to go to the waterfall at Dorrigo. InsyaAllah I will plan a trip there before I graduate at the end of the year. Thanks to the people who went on the trip with me; Hana, Mia, Aina, Nabila, Rurry, Elena and lastly Zaf. You guys had been a good company and hope we have more of these trips in the future.

Till then~