Stargazing

13 January, 2010

Ballina is gorgeous!

On my only trip to Byron Bay, I loved the place so much that I have been looking forward to getting back there. Ballina is so close to Byron that I sort of expected not to enjoy it, anticipating moving on. But it is too beautiful to speed through. The huge, blue Richmond River flows into the ocean, so there is an abundance of water all around. Not to mention the lake which I'm looking forward to getting to with the kids - it is so calm but still sea water so nothing dodgy hiding in there. Of course the weather helps - it is perfect out. Not too hot, but hot enough to really appreciate getting into the ocean. Nick and I did get a bit (!) sunburnt, but we're very good at keeping the kids protected. We actually bought ourselves rashies today for a bit more coverage. Stretch marks really stand out on red skin.

Tonight we are at a lovely caravan park. We have enjoyed the lovely pool, playground and camp kitchen, and plan on staying tomorrow as well so that we can just hang out and relax. We have been surprised at how much there is to do to keep us busy, even when we're just carefree travellers. There's always a meal to prepare or dishes to do, or laundry to hand wash (I'm waaay too much of a perfectionist to hand wash laundry in a decent amount of time, I need to work on that) or now-dry ex-laundry to take off the line and fold up and put away. Caravan parks are nice after a few days of free camping because we can have nice showers and not worry about running down our tank, and we can use the washing machine and get everything clean. Oh, and the toilets flush. I'm sure we'll get better at this as we go.

Of note: Stars are really mesmorising. There are a whole hell of a lot of them, and you can see so many of them when you aren't in a city with all of its light pollution. I love that term by the way - light pollution. Like noise pollution. Meaning: whatever you don't want to see or hear. Anyway, tonight I pulled a chair out to watch the stars in action; a surprising amount of action there is if you watch for awhile and don't have all of that light pollution in the way. Hehe. There are shooting stars, what I assume are satellites, what I swear was some sort of nova but it happened so fast I couldn't be sure of what I saw. And the whole time I had that Hum song in my head, but you can't really count stars. I mean, even if you could keep track of the ones you had already counted so that you didn't double up, and even if you could somehow mark your starting point to keep it all clear, you just can't quite see so many of them. There are the big, bright, obvious ones, and the less bright but still clear as day (as they say) stars. Then there are the ones you can make out but you have to kind of look to the side a little bit. But then there are the milky smears that you know come from the light of stars but for the life of you, your eyes just can't pick them up. Counting stars is maddening business. Don't try it.