The town of Byron is charming and international. The visitors are a nice blend of locals, hippies, and happy families on holiday. The locals are a very spiritual bunch, and when we were there they were milking the vibe of a recent Rainbow Gathering. People were constantly holding hands and chanting.

Magically, a rainbow haze hangs in the air in Byron Bay. I was told it was because of the eucalyptus oil released into the air. Whatever, I swear, other people can see it.

We stayed a little while at the Belongil Beach house, which was nice, and then at the fabulous Arts Factory. This place boasted a movie theater where everyone got to lie down on cushions, a happening café, and cool stuff like yoga and drumming lessons.

Then we met some people that let us stay with them up in the hills. The hills surrounding Byron used to be dairy farms but now hippies have bought up all the land and replanted the trees. Every Sunday they meet for flea markets where they sell their art and special brownies, and jam on guitars and didgeridoos. I have never seen a community of people so devoted to permaculture, spiritual progress, and experiments in enlightened polyamory.

I stayed awhile on an organic farm with a permaculture nut named Howard, who put me up in a teepee and fed me in exchange for my planting trees and stuff. (I happened to meet the good Howard through friends but anyone can work on farms in exchange for room and board through WOOF, or Willing Workers on Organic Farms. This organization also exists in England and New Zealand too, not in America though, hmm.) On the farm, I slept better than I ever had in my life. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear those far-out bird calls in my head: there was one duet where the male would emit a long pulsing tone like an alien radar, and then the female would finish with an echoing downpitch! Then there was the laughing kookaburra that has got to be mocking you, an important bird in aborginial legends (reminds me of the koan-bird in Huxley's Island...)

It was so inspiring how Howard had transformed the land from a cattle-trashed dirtpit to a lush farm...he even claimed that some koalas had come back live in the trees. His secret was having rave parties where people were required to bring and plant at least one tree.

Speaking of trees, I met this one guy in the hills surrounding Byron whose plantation was officially the most diverse and lush tropical fruit plantation in Australia. This guy was a quirky, middle-aged, 5'1'' American expat with a Jersey accent who had a reputation for eating worms at community meetings to get people to listen to him rant. No straight rows and columns at this plantation; we followed him willy-nilly through his random maze of trees, some so exotic they had no English or Latin names. He peeled luscious blood-red and black fruits for us to taste, as he explained that his secret was planting dead dogs underneath the trees. He also enjoyed making garbage sculptures and was an expert on growing psychoactive seeds.