The legends were true

Yesterday was Australia Day, which we celebrated in Byron Bay, which is an interesting place. I imagine it's a lot like Scarborough would have been in the 1950's, before cheap package holidays let the Inselaffen escape their grim and moldy land on their holidays, except with better drugs and more burnouts, and better music, and much more expensive, of course. Actually it's probably nothing like Scarborough was in the 1950's but I think it's no coincidence that here in Northern Rivers I'm homesick for just about everywhere I've ever thought of as home except for North Yorkshire. Topographically it is very evocative of Yorkshire here, but it's not ruined and economically bereft, and it's about 20 degrees warmer. And people's accents are a million times less awesome.

Anyways, we stuck to the beach and one or two places off the main tourist strips and went walking around, and heard some flamenco, and it was lovely, and I saw my first wild sea turtles, stingrays, and dolphins. The last especially were a revelation, as I've always suspected dolphins were actually imaginary, since all of my faith in their existence was based on hearsay. The ones we saw were a little reddish, which was a nice touch, and looked like they were having an awesome time. This was also the first time I really went into the ocean. It's the same ocean I sort of blame for M disappearing in a ridiculous anthropomorphisizing sort of way, and for heaven's sake it was on the other side of it, but I still have to explain to myself that it's not the ocean's fault, and that I'm not suddenly going to see him tumbled up on our coast here in the waves.