Schoolies, Foolies and Toolies

Well we certainly are not Schoolies, so where does that leave us? A trip down to the Gold Coast was great. Just loved Tweed Heads, Byron Bay. Surfers Paradise is a little too built up for my taste. It is the annual event when school leavers having finished 12 years of consecutive study congregate in trendy places and party it up. Many finding enterprising ways to secure horrendously overpriced booze and then flop about like jelly fish until escorted home by a kindly police officer or in sometimes more dubious situations by a "Toolie". 

View from Tamborine Mountain

Apparently a Toolie refers to some of the more predatory, non school going individuals out there that see Schoolies week as an opportunity to "socialise" with a younger crowd. Needless to say Schoolies refer to them as being diminutive tools!

And then of course there are Foolies. These are generally Schoolies who, all fired up on the local plonk, proceed to perform daring stunts to impress friends, fair maidens and their Facebook friends by spider manning between balconies of tower apartment blocks and other such stunts. The occasional mishap making the news the next day.

On the way home from Byron Bay (where I have not seen a higher concentration of body beautiful's in many a year), we decided to stop in at Nimbin. Rather disappointed that Byron Bay is seemingly devoid of hippies and instead full of tourists and residents with very non hippy budgets from the looks of the houses. Nimbin did not disappoint though. We arrived just as a small (5 stall) farmers market was going up. Variety of products and produce for sale. The best being produce grown to the sounds of classical music. It did not look like it had done them much good as they were all rather organic (read puny) and knobbly…maybe they tasted better.

Goat poo anyone?

The highlight of Sally's day was being offered a bit of "giggle twig" by a decidedly grubby individual. Not being of that persuasion we gratefully declined his offer of "Nimbin home grown mango flavoured grass" and continued to peruse the hemp related paraphernalia in the many shops.