Minyon Falls

Sister-in-law and boyfriend are here for a few days so have been doing touristy things that one can do around Byron; hubby and I have realised that we should probably leave the house more often - Byron is nice at night! Stuff is actually happening! That is why we moved here! It's been good to revisit the Buddha Bar, Treehouse, Beachy, Poinciana (Mullum) etc.

Yesterday, decided it was time for some hard-core tourism. No more cruising around the Bay: time to explore - Minyon Falls... The falls are out towards Lismore somewhere - drive around on small roads filled with potholes for a while and you shall eventually arrive. Fortunately for me, hubby has a compass built into brain.

Hubby kindly did some research prior to departure - came back with the message that it was likely an easy walk, thongs -

(In Australia these are thongs, in case you thought we went bush-walking in string-undies)

- should be fine.

Said and done, all hopped into Commodore wearing shorts and thongs envisaging a serene stroll through forest and cooling dip at the base of waterfall. Such as in the film the blue lagoon.

Five minutes into walk through bush hubby casually mentions that his research had suggested an abundance of leaches present in these parts. A leach is a disgusting worm-like creature of no use to anyone - its primary purpose in life is to attach itself to an animal or person (preferably me) and latch on - whereupon it starts to drink blood and grow larger. They may attempt to crawl into difficult to reach area and try to hide out there.

Yes. Am not kidding you. It's every bit as frightening as it sounds.

Naturally embarked on mental breakdown almost immediately and contemplated refusing to walk any further making hubby arrange airlift out of leach-infested-hell, strangely though; nobody else seemed worried - and in fact seemed to be of the opinion that I was acting like a princess.

Acting like a princess is Australian for being incredibly unreasonable and generally being a baby. This is very bad. You do not want to be accused of being a princess, in Australia. Particularly in you are a man, but even so - decided to swallow my anxiety and tread on.

The base of the falls was nothing like the blue lagoon - had to death-defyingly climb over rocks to get to a point where we could view it, at which time nobody felt inclined to proceed down to water to swim-with-leaches.

In saying that - was a pretty spectacular sight.

One which I will never see again - except from the viewing platform up the top...

This is from the platform up top - recommended viewpoint!

From the base.

We also saw an awesome python snake, will borrow someone else's photos and upload next time!