The Null Device

Two things I ended up taking back from Byron Bay: a bag of Byron Chai mix (which is quite good; one of the better chai mixes I've tried), and a small jar of lemon aspen jelly (which tastes like lemons, only perhaps slightly more sour). Apparently lemon aspen jelly is made from lemon aspens (a native plant that only grows in Australian rainforests), and not lemons aspen (though it sounds like it should be).

¶ byron bay chai lemon aspens personal travel 1

I spent the past two nights in Byron Bay. My impressions of the place:

• Most of the population appears to be tourists; mainly young people (permanently or temporarily) associated with the Skeg subculture. Maybe this is just a summer thing.
• Furthermore, most of the people employed here (at least in tourist-related industries) appear to be either British or Canadian.
• The notorious yuppification: there don't seem to be too many signs of it; a few luxury cars here and there, and the prices in the local real-estate shop windows (you won't have much change left over from a million if you buy a place here). Alas, there are no 802.11 access points anywhere in town; mind you, WiFi in Australia appears to be mostly a Sydney thing.
• Were I a wealthy man, I'm not sure that my first choice of locations for a summer residence would be a town swarming with hordes of young tourists.
• Having said that, things cost about twice as much as they do in Melbourne; you can spend almost $10 on a croissant and a pot of chai, or $25 on a curry dinner (albeit a mango curry you're unlikely to get back home).
• Virtually all the cafés serve chai, as well as something called LSD (the last two letters standing for Soy and Dandelion).

As far as local establishments go that I've been to, I rather liked the Twisted Sista Café; on the opposite side of the road, the Cardamom Pod is also good, as a cheapish curry place. (That's not the mango curry place; that's Oh! Delhi.)

All in all, I liked Byron Bay, though I can't help get the feeling that the town was a lot more charming before it became so popular. I suspect that over the next few decades it may turn into another Gold Coast.

¶ byron bay chai travel 2

The PCs at a certain hostel in Byron Bay appear to be fuzzy with adware; every few minutes, a program named "Save!" throws up a pop-under ad for some product. Not sure whether they installed it themselves or whether it snuck in with a "funny screensaver" or porn downloader or something.

"Save!", which claims to be associated with some outfit named "WhenU", strenuously disclaims acting as spyware, logging websites, passwords or anything like that. Though, of course, any piece of conspicuous spyware would say that as well. Just in case, I've taken to entering passwords by cutting and pasting words from other pages, deleting bits of them and adding the odd keystroke or two. It is probably theoretically possible to write a piece of spyware that keeps track of pastes, cursor positions, &c. into a password entry box, but in practice it may be quite difficult.

I wonder whether the alleged yuppification of Byron Bay has extended to there being wireless internet anywhere.

¶ byron bay malware security windows 2

As the former hippie-trail resort town of Byron Bay bcomes fashionably popular with mainstream people with respectable jobs and kids and such, the police have acted to make it safe for suburban normalcy, and tackling the town's runaway marijuana smoking problem. This they are doing by cracking down on cannabis possession with sniffer dog patrols, searching suspected drug fiends in the streets. Naturally, the dreadlocked and drugfucked hippie types that have frequented the formerly easygoing town for decades aren't pleased, and are planning to protest what they consider an erosion of their civil liberties. (Or perhaps the goal is to get them to move to Nimbin, thus making room for people with more money to spend?)

¶ byron bay drugs hippies mainstream war on drugs 0