I don’t love to gush about freebies, and often don’t love taking them with all the baggage they bring but I would be some sort of idiot to turn down a free trip to Byron Bay to take part in the Stone and Wood annual Stone brew day.

An all expenses trip to the beachside town of Byron Bay just as Melbourne starts showing autumnal signs? Yeah, ok, I’ll accept that one.

To avoid this being a “they invited me, made me feel as welcome as you could imagine, and all I paid for was a chicken schnitzel roll late on Saturday night” gusher of a post I’ll make this as succinct as possible in bullet point form.