“You did Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Newcastle?”
“Errr… Yeah – how did you guess?”
“That’s what everyone does.”

And so I recently learned from Stephan, Dutch architect now living in New Zealand, that my itinerary on the Australian East Coast was kind of classical. I only looked at the map and decided to hit the biggest points along the way, though, but I guess that on a coast, you have not much of a choice when you follow that sort of thought process.

So I followed the touristic road, named the Pacific Highway, towards the south while the summer was giving life to thousands of tourists, so-called backpackers (I will come back later to these ones), and travelers.

The journey with Tim, brightened by American country music and Swedish metal, gave me the first sight of small Australian towns – Lismore and Casino to name them – as we had to bypass a portion of the highway because of the floods. We nevertheless managed to arrive in Coffs quite quickly, and we said good bye as Tim was heading to Newcastle to find a job.

After a night-time walk near the jetty, I took a lazy day of rest on the beach. A few Israeli travelers, met in the hostel, joined me for a while and we shared an afternoon under the sun – if napping, reading or listening to music without ever talking can possibly be tagged as shared.

But the next day proved more interesting. An early wake up allowed me to enjoy my first sunrise in Australia – and what a sunrise. From the tip of Muttonbird Island (not much of an island since it is linked to the mainland and easily accessible by walking but well), I could gasp in awe at fishermen challenging the might of the ocean, at sea kayaks passing by or just at our closest star, enlightening the world.

I took a walk along the coast, to the northern part of Park Beach, and discovered it was a famous spot for the surfers to catch beautiful waves. And for me to shoot them. After making a long round in town, I finished, unsurprisingly, crashing on the sand of Jetty Beach again.

I had decided, at this very moment, that I would start hitch-hiking the next morning.