Byron Bay and Crystal Castle

From Ballina I passed through Byron Bay on my way to the Gold Coast. Even though school holidays had finished it was still pretty busy, however not as many cheesecloth wearing Volkswagen driving hippies as I expected (I guess they are all in Nimbin). Angela - no chance to use my weed purse yet. 

I drove/walked up to the lighthouse at Cape Byron from which spectacular views of Byron and the surrounding hunter land were had. It is also the most Easterly point in Australia which means I now knocked off two of Australia's extremes (the other being Wilson's Prom - most southerly point of Australia on the mainland).  I wasn't planning on going to Cape York, but this does put some pressure on trying to get to the Northely most point.  However I think the "westerly most point" might need to wait for another trip. 

I also travelled out the back of Byron to a place called the Crystal Castle. It has an interesting history, starting off as a no compromise castle style building built on the intersection of magnetic lay lines, but the "no compromise" bit meant the original owners went broke. It was the.bought by the King family who had a vision to turn it into a type of spiritual retreat. Although it has no specific ties to any particular religion, there is a strong Buddhist focus to the extent that it has been visited by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Monks have agreed to the construction of a Stupor in the name of world peace. There are beautiful gardens with magnificent stone sculptures of deities of various world religions, along with a large number of crystals, precious stones and geodes.  It was interesting that having walked the labyrinth (based on the one at Chatres Cathedral), I had a strong sense that my journey was just beginning (the last three and a half weeks have just been a warm up).   Beautiful afternoon all 'round. 

Pictures to follow, once I upload them to Flickr. 

And now for something completely different, I'm off to Sea World...

22/10/2012 - Sorry for the delay, here's a LINK to a slideshow of the Byron and Crystal Castle Photos.