Murwillumbah

The view of Mount Warning from our hostel

We spent four days in Murwillambah which is a small country town on the banks of the Tweed river. The buildings in the town are slightly dated (built in the 40’s, the old one burnt down!) and so they have been declared of historic value and now cannot be changed. The shops shut at midday on sat and don’t re-open until Monday. All the restaurants and cafes are also only open at peak times, we got very funny looks requesting lunch at 3pm one day.

The Murwillumbah hostel was great. It is run by a man named Tassie (real name Neville but he doesn’t like it and is called Tassie as that is where he is from) who has run it and lived there since the ’80s. The hostel is on the river bank and you have private access to the river from the garden. It has spectacular views of the river and Mount Warning from the balcony. Our room opened straight onto the balcony so you could stand in the room and look at the mountain.

Tassie is very friendly and quirky. Every night at 9pm he brings out a tub of ice cream and gives everyone a bowl for free. He said that he does this as it gets everyone together and gets everyone talking. You could tell that he really enjoyed having the company around and enjoyed seeing people meeting other people. Tassie was full of information on the area and was happy to help in anyway he could.

On our first night there it was the busiest the hostel had been all year (about 15 people) and Tassie was so happy to have everyone around that he made a campfire and gave everyone some marshmellows to toast. His grandson also came down to share the fire. It was a nice atmosphere and everyone got chatting.

On our second day in Murwillumbah we took out the hostel canoe. It was a double sit on top canoe and all the equipment was a bit worse for ware. We went up the river Tweed and headed off on a creek. We were on the water for about 3 hours with a quick pit stop for lunch. We saw lots of wildlife on the creek including azure kingfishers, jumping fish, ospreys and Kites. It was good fun.

The hostel had some unusual friends in the form of water dragons. They would come up on to the balcony everyday especially in the morning. Tassie had warned us that one large one would run towards you if he saw you but said he was just friendly and after some fruit. He stated that if you feed them fruit they will come and eat out of your hand. This we had to try.

Water Dragon feeding on our hostel balcony

We saved up a banana and waited until we saw one. We put some banana down and they loved it. We fed them 3 days running and they seemed to enjoy our banana. One day the big one (aptly named Lucky and easy to spot as he has 3 toes missing and a kink in his tail) came to say hello. Ruth sat down quietly and started giving him banana. By the end of it he was eating out of her hand. It was brilliant.

We also saw our first big spider in this hostel which Jo had to shoo out while Ruth was on the bed staying well out the way. We think that it was a huntsman spider (non posionous but big). We survived without any problems. In the evening in the hostel we were surrounded by Christmas Bugs. So called as they only come out on Christmas eve in some parts of the country. They don’t seem to live long and are very stupid, walking straight into the fire.