I can’t recall when I first visited the sleepy northern New South Wales town of Byron Bay.

It might have been as long ago as the late 1960s, when I was at university, but suspect it was in 1984 when I drove from Tasmania all along Australia’s east coast to Cairns in far North Queensland.  The town was quiet, known for its great beaches and for the semi-official nudist beach at Kings Beach near the Broken Head Holiday Park.  Accommodation in the town was pretty basic, I recall, and the options for fine dining were limited to fish’n’chips or hamburgers. 

To the horror of the staid country folk locals, most visitors were bare-footed, rather grimy and clad in tattered and baggy re-cycled Indian-cotton dresses or equally tattered jeans and T-shirts with marijuana and Jimi Hendrix logos … I may be getting my Vietnam-era and the sixties love-child memories all mixed up … but you get the sort of picture the place used to be. 

Just up the hills in the hinterland were small villages made famous in the 1970s by the grass-smokin’ mind-blowin’ hippies of Nimbin, Mullumbimby and Bangalow.

I visited the town many times over subsequent years and saw it gradually becoming more gentrified as chic boutiques opened (not a cheesecloth shirt to be found) and as restaurants learned that seafood mornay was a bit old hat.  Real estate prices skyrocketed as assorted film stars bought properties.

I understand that Zac Efron and Matt Damon have houses here, that Paul Hogan’s mate “Strop” Cornwall is also a local and that Chris Hemsworth (Thor et al) serves at his kids’ local school tuck shop, and that sundry Mick Jaggers and Kylie Minogues have pottered along the main street with ice creams in their hands. 

On this visit, I arrived after sunset on a cold and wet winter’s afternoon, found my accommodation (the delightful Mister BnB Belongil Beach hut) without a single paparazzo focusing a camera on me … and decided to explore old memories the following day.

Travelling North

I had been in Sydney for a short visit – mainly to support my favourite Rugby Union team, the Australian Wallabies, in their quest to defeat another team.  They and I were both disappointed.  Argentina’s big cats Los Pumas thoroughly mauled our cuddly marsupials, The Wallabies …

The drive north from Sydney to Byron is about eight hundred kilometres and something of an ordeal on the multi-lane expressway packed with cars log-jammed in both directions. Drivers can escape the madness near Newcastle and then take slower and more scenic roads.

Port Macquarie

My first stop was at the pretty town of Port Macquarie and my hotel was just a short stroll from Oxley Beach.  My footsteps in the sand there will forever be remembered …. until the next tide comes in.

I had not realised that PM had been a penal settlement in the 1800s but was glad that when I was there, soldiers and police and convicts “of the worst possible character” were nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, there were elderly couples poddling like me along a lovely long coastal walk, helpful signs telling walkers to beware of snakes and to be on the look-out for the migrating long-tailed drongos, a couple of wet-suited surfers riding their boards in the early morning sunshine, and a very brave bikini-clad mum plunging into the sea while her (much more sensible) partner and woolly-clad babe played among the rocks and dunes of the shore.

As I reached the northern end of Town Beach, I spotted a pile of ugly, discarded, garbage bags piled up along the edge of the pier leading out to the sea. 

A few minutes later I reached these garbage bags and found they were actually painted rocks – with tributes to lovers who had visited the area, to families who had spent their Christmases there, to couples who had become engaged there … and to all too many young men and boys who had died there.

I had a cheerful breakfast at the Little Shack, watched sea planes land and take off, but did not see any whales – perhaps it was not the right season for whale watching.  Although one swimmer I spotted lying on the beach may well have been identified as a beached whale … the RSPCA was not called out.

The Big Banana

Australia delights in having BIG things:  The Big Prawn, The Big Guitar, the big what not.  Australia’s country capital Tamworth has its big guitar of course, Cobar in Central Western NSW has The Big Beer Can and somewhere else has The Big Blue Heeler (a type of dog).  Coffs Harbour is famous for its Big Banana, but before I reached either the giant concrete fruit or the town, I motored past a huge Winnebago mobile home with an almost equally large SUV tethered to its rear as a sort of car-away-from-home. 

• It looked, actually, rather like a baby elephant calf using its tiny trunk to grab hold of Momma elephant’s tiny tail.

Coffs Harbour (I do not know who Mr Coff was – or why there is no apostrophe in the town’s name) is a nice little town with a huge marina, a long wharf, the Fishermen’s Co-operative and Latitude 30 Restaurant, where I had a pleasant Pinot Gris and some wonderful garlic king prawns.

Yamba

I had forgotten that sugar cane grows in Northern NSW. 

In my mind’s eye it is a North Queensland crop … but obviously not.  The NSW cane harvest season usually commences in June, just a few weeks before my journey through this part of the country.  There were road signs telling drivers to beware of the cane burning season and its smoke hazard.  We were advised to proceed with caution … although there was little smoke as I drove north.

There were busy sugar mills at Yamba, at Broadwater and at Woodburn – which is an ironically named town considering the pollution given off by its sugar mill.

Byron Bay revisited

It was raining and cold when I arrived at my accommodation.  I could not open the gate.  I could not find the entrance to my “absolute beachfront” Belongil Beach hut.  I was not at all a happy chappie … but rather a bruised and battered and bewildered beachfront sort of bugger.

• Hmmm

… and then Scott, the manager and owner, arrived.

He showed me how to open the key-pad protected gate, showed me where my suite was (keys and welcome note already at the door) and the sun started shining again.  Well … no … not really … but I was very happy with the quiet and well-furnished studio suite with a balcony and a hammock and a clothes-optional garden … and the tiniest WC I have ever seen in any bathroom.

• I am so glad I am not a sumo wrestler

Each morning I crossed Childe Street onto the beach and walked north along Belongil Beach – a superb wide-open space with a few walkers and their dogs, a hundred or two seagulls, and not much more.

Years ago I found a cartoon of a chubby old chappie shedding his suit and his shoes and his tie as he ran along a beach waving his arms in the air while his wife, sitting more demurely under a fringed pink beach umbrella admonished him:

• For god’s sake, Gerald, at least unwind gracefully!

I wish I could find that cartoon again on Internet, but that woman could have been the old girl who watched me as I shed my hat and my shoes and my shirt and my shorts and plunged into the surprisingly warm Pacific Ocean waves at North Belongil Beach.

Another old man was also bathing naked, and a woman of a certain age dropped her top, then her skirt, and luxuriated in some naked beach-side yoga.

• Children – please look away!

Byron Town

The little town of Byron Bay is quite small – just six or eight blocks by two or three blocks.  Other beachside settlements link up to the town but a pedestrian can easily cover the whole area in a few minutes.

On previous visits, I found the Beach Hotel to be a centre of activity, of life, of energy.  On this visit it was virtually deserted.  Perhaps it was the time of my visit or the season or the fact that Aquarius was setting rather than rising … but I found it unsettling. 

In fact, I found the whole town to be rather unsettling.  I do not know if it was because I am now so much older … or if the town itself has changed so much.  I did not see too many young people and I did see too many old people.  I did not find any ZIP or ZING to the town, and I had perhaps the worst and most expensive meal of its type I have ever had in Lawson Street – at a place apparently known for its oysters:

• Six oysters
• A pork chop
• A glass of white wine
• AU$93.38

I did not include a tip as the oysters were not what I ordered (Kilpatrick oysters are pretty standard – but these had been “modernised” or “upgraded” or “Pacific Coastalised”) – and were very disappointing.  The pork chop was dry.  The service was offhanded, and I got the impression the waiter would really rather have been somewhere else.

I simply cannot understand the comments by Peta Murray, a Queensland Sunday Mail columnist who stated that “The Balcony is still the perfect perch to sip a sundowner.”

• Perhaps she was a “guest” of The Balcony but did not eat there …

This meal was so disappointing as I had remembered many great meals in Byron Bay and in particular my visits to Raes Dining Room (www.raes.com.au/diningroom) in Wategos Bay, below the famous lighthouse.  Today’s menu shows that I could have had a far better meal there, for about the same price, as I did at the dread balcony place …

The 1901 lighthouse is still there, as is Australia’s most easterly lookout point, but there is now an admission charge for vehicles, and visitors are allowed a maximum of one hour for their photo shoot or their brunch. 

Something else that has not changed is the idea that Byron is a place for healing, for rejuvenation and for resuscitation. I found listings for a teacher of acutonics (?), someone who offered neuroenergetic kinesiology, a spiritual healer and if all else failed, hypnosis and neurofeedback were available.

• Did I mention Embodyed (sic) Ayurveda and Shirodhara?

I guess there is still a bit of charm about the place, and I guess the 2022 floods had a significant impact on life, and I guess the fact that apart from Sydney, Byron is reputed to have the highest rate of homelessness in New South Wales are all coming together to impact the “flavour” of this beachfront town. 

However, I found myself rather longing to be dressed in a scruffy cheesecloth tie-dyed kaftan going for a meal with a prawn cocktail entrée followed by some crunchy seafood mornay – perhaps accompanied by a puff or two of the local vegetation.

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Journey July 2023

Text and photographs © Christopher Hall August 2023

Illustrations marked thus * from the Internet

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In my blogs I try to present a snapshot of the places I have discovered during a brief visit.   I am not trying to present a detailed picture of the whole city or the whole region or the whole country.

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If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight.

• Attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero – On Friendship

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