Published in Sydney Morning Herald and The Age 13 April, 2013

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/paradise-lost-why-i-m-leaving-byron-bay-just-when-netflix-is-moving-in-20210411-p57i73.html

The real estate agent was incredulous. “Why would you want to leave Byron?” she asked as she showed me a house for sale an hour north.

It was a good question, one that I’d asked myself often, but the new Netflix show Byron Baes, featuring the town’s influencer culture, confirms the decision is right.

Our decade in Byron has been pretty much a love affair. There was the travel-brochure version: I loved the world-class beaches, rivers, coffee and slowed-down lifestyle. There was the esoteric version: I had grown to love the Byron-esque kookiness, learning to contribute to conversations about my aura and completing job applications that required my astrology sign.

Then there was finding a home on acreage with ocean views that pulled at us from each room and anointed our evenings with a lighthouse flash every 13 seconds, I exhaled and my heart cracked open.

All that was the culmination of a single moment during a visit to Byron. Prominently pregnant with my first child, swaying with the heat and humidity and flush with baby hormones, I knew this was where I wanted to raise my children.

It took 14 years from that trip to be ready to leave Melbourne and its three-question triangulation on meeting anyone new: “What do you do, where do you live and what school do your kids attend?” Now, in Byron, I’m far more likely to encounter a casual, “So, are you working?”

The kids embraced the lifestyle, relaxing their vigilance on conformity and, when the youngest accidentally spent a day at school wearing his furry monkey slippers without attracting a single comment, we acknowledged that a significant shift had occurred.

We considered ourselves “true locals” when Gracie adopted us. Through her daily beach walk and chocolate labrador eyes, we met people who are now lifelong friends. We became accustomed to the lushness, the mould and saved George-the-Snakeman’s number in our phones.

Even at the outset, paradise was not perfect. Life in Byron thrilled and frustrated in equal measure. We’d watch dolphins swim in our local river but ruin tyres on potholes on the way home. We ran a business from home but had to order a satellite dish because there were insufficient ports at the exchange. Already dodgy bandwidth floundered as the population swelled for festivals.

We loved Byron’s relaxed way of life and beautiful landscape so we found ways to navigate tourists, sand flies and Thursday Market traffic bottlenecks.

But, a decade on, things have started to wear thin. The holiday Insta-glam masks the reality of living in a regional town where ratepayers foot the bill for millions of visitors a year. House prices are escalating and rentals are disappearing. In a region filled with no-longer-sleepy towns, traffic congestion and insufficient parking seem unsolvable problems. A new level of aggressive competitiveness has arrived, pitting us against each other on the road, in the surf and during the search for a home.

Last year’s COVID migration brought a wave of city-assertiveness that even Byron couldn’t soften, and it pushed us to our tipping point just as the last child moved to the city and Gracie’s worsening arthritis meant she could no longer navigate the endless beaches.

Locals often protest against change by saying “We don’t want Byron to become Surfers Paradise.” But I feel we are instead living in Surface Paradise. It might look all peace and love in a town so cool it has llamas on leads in the main street, but there’s a simmering anger too strong to be soothed by a serve of locally produced, organic, gluten-free chai latte.

So, my family has embraced the real estate boom and sold our home to someone from Melbourne who only ever saw it online. This sale has been our light within the dark, the other side of the two-sided coin that is so very Byron. The heft of that coinage is allowing us to go north and buy mortgage-free.

I didn’t have a ready answer for the real estate agent at the time, but I do now. I’ll be back to visit friends and enjoy camping weekends but, for me, the surface of Byron’s paradise has cracked beyond repair.

Snow makes the rain cold. It turns the wind mean and forces the wet through your expensive high-tech water-proof jacket.

I love the Camino but it’s been a tough few days. Water sloshing around in my boots and blisters blooming and threatening to shred my feet again until I dread opening my boots to face the next instalment of deterioration.

I walked through far worse on my first Camino and found the pure joy that elegantly dulls the pain.

Not having the time to do the whole Camino gives my feet permission to feel a small sense of relief as I limp to the station with my pack of mud-sodden clothes to return to the UK.

We will be back.

Buen Camino

I found my feet today – They were hiding behind fear and caution.

It was such a glorious moment when my legs swung loose and the rev I’ve been missing suddenly kicked in.

I powered up the hills and danced along the flat sections – I felt like the me that finished the first Camino.

It’s a week today that I’ve been walking and certainly I’m fitter than when I started but when I faced a long hill stretch today and I needed to dig deep and I plugged in a song that I’d loved when I was walking the first time and my body responded in an instant. A memory clicked and it surged. Literally, it sang the song and with the song on repeat I passed all the pilgrims that had passed me earlier as I’d plodded on.

I realised I’d been protecting myself and forcing my walk to be dictated by what I thought my knees could cope with through fear of injury.

My knees ended the day absolutely fine.

Song: Moth’s Wings by Passion Pit

Battling sore feet today on the 22 km’s to Pamplona but grateful to the Camino for its gifts for us to find along The Way – a rain cover for my pack (mine had a hole), waterproof pants (for the rain forecast for tomorrow) and a hat for James (we knew it was for him because it wasn’t one I’d ever wear)

Now I just need a pair of fresh feet, paella and a glass of tinto vino.

Am I mad? Last time I was fit, this time I’m definitely not and my body hurts (and my soul as I face the mental effort to walk through exhaustion and pain)

This time my pack is 4 kilos lighter but I weigh more. Kilo for kilo I’m carrying more weight.

I’m still irritated by industrial grade snorers (read broken concrete pump) that maintain their pace throughout the night only to wake at 5am, refreshed, while their withered room mates blink as the snorer switches on lights and chews vitamins with a vigour that makes you want to throw your useless waxy ear plugs at them.

Chances are I’ll see the snorer at breakfast and numerous times during the day so I’ve had to work through my pilgrim-righteousness that demands an adhearance to some kind of etiquette that offers consideration for your fellow pilgrim.

It’s still beautiful and magical and I love it.

via Same, Same but very different

Bilbo charmed us with its extraordinary Guggenheim and wonderful food to suit any hour of the day. Breakfast was a mistaken order of bacon and crab meat toastie but we managed to successfully order subsequent meals and excellent red wine accompaniments.

Arrived in St Jean this afternoon by bus(!) not train to a town celebrating Easter Sunday and we found it ancient wall-to-ancient wall stuffed with pilgrims. The secret is officially out.

We’re ready as we can be to tackle the first day tomorrow ….

Buen Camino

Five years since my first Camino and I’m hitting the replay button.

Why the same Camino when there are other adventures? I need to fill the gaps of my manuscript with the sounds, smells and taste of the Spain I walked.

My words on the page feel dry. They need to breathe and I need to let them go out into the world and be a book.

So I’m going to re-see and re-sink into a pilgrim’s life for a few weeks.