Street Life

Red

Tonys POV

24 Hours later I board the plane to Sydney. I am not a fan of long flights and this one will be nearly 15 hours long I just hope it will bring me closer to her. I try to sleep as much as possible because I will arrive in Sydney in the early morning two days later because you cross the date line and I intend to get a car and drive north immediately, the little town I am heading to is about 800 kilometres north which is about 500 miles and should take me between 8 to 10 hours. So I hope to get there in the evening.

I considered to stay a couple of days in Sydney to visit the city but I knew that I wouldn't be in the right mood for sightseeing anyway.
I wanted to get to Byron, that was the name of the town, as soon as possible and try to find Sharky, I didn't have a plan nor did I know anything about this town but I would just go step by step and try to figure things out as I go along.

I had been to Australia before while touring but of course only saw the major cities so I knew nothing about the landscape and countryside.
When I arrived in Sydney I was jet lagged and tired but determined to go through with it. I felt considerably better now that I was actually doing something than all of the days I sat around at home sulking.
I rented a car and tried to find my way out of the city towards the northern highway. Driving on the other side of the road needed all my concentration and felt really awkward until I reached the highway. This road went along the coastline towards the north almost all the way and had some beautiful glimpses of the ocean once in a while, it was a clear and warm spring day which is autumn in Australia and soon I was intrigued by the nature and landscape that seemed somewhat similar but yet on closer look so different from my home country.

I drove through Eucalyptus forests and red soils with little vegetation then again lush subtropical rain forests. I took a couple of rests along the way in little coast town cafés and the people were friendly and natural. They did not treat me differently because of my appearance but did not really seem to take notice of my haircut, piercings and heavily tattooed skin.
When they asked me where I was heading it seemed everybody knew this little town of Byron and they nodded their heads in comprehension like they thought it was clear that I wanted to go there.

The sun was standing low over the mountains in the distance when I finally saw the exit sign for Byron, the light intensifying all the colours, it was a beautiful scenery with lush green forests on the hilly landscape and coastal vegetation on the flats, other than in California the sun does not set in the ocean but rise from it. I could totally understand how a person like Sharky would live in a place like this even more so when I read the sign that marks the city limits. It said 'Welcome to Byron Bay, cheer up, slow down, chill out.' I smiled that was so like Sharky that I got pretty sure of all places she could be here.

It was truly a tiny town but I soon learned that it was flooded by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year because of its beauty and people, as there were practically no big hotels I rented a little cottage in town through the visitors information.
It was nearly dark when I had finally settled in and I decided to get something to eat and start looking for someone who might know Sharky.
I went up to the Main beach where all the restaurants and eateries lined up around a parking lot. A lot of young people gathered to see the sundown, they were drumming and playing guitar, dancing and others were skating round the parking lot on their longboards while the surfers caught the last wave in before the night fell onto the beautiful bay.
I started to talk to a few people there, they were from all different parts of the world and most of them stayed in Byron only for some months. They could not know Sharky because she had been in the States for nearly two years, so I would have to talk to the locals.

Some of the surfers I asked did remember her once I described how she looked but nobody knew her nickname that was when I remembered she told me she got it when she first arrived in America, so I continued to ask for Charlie which they knew from years before but they hadn't heard that she was back. I can only hope this was because it had been only a few days since she arrived and not that she decided to go somewhere else.
Apparently she had been a surfer girl, another thing I hadn't known about her and she used to work at a place called The Roadhouse as a waitress before she went to the US.
As I was beyond tired I grabbed a burger from one of the food outlets and decided to start searching tomorrow and walked back to my house. The people that I met on my way back were from all different styles and genres, hippies, surfer, skater, artists, street musicians, tattooed, pierced, with colourful hair and clothes, some old, some young, from different races and countries.
I went to bed and fell asleep almost instantly with the hope that tomorrow would be a good day for me.