Introducing Byron Bay & the Northern Rivers Rainbow Region of NSW
Lush. Laid back. Tropical. Fun. Feral. Fecund. Moist. Diverse. Deeply relaxing… They’re the kind of words that spring to mind of when you dream about this pocket of Northern NSW.
This area doesn’t claim to have all things for all people. But there’s a hell of a lot on offer for a certain type of person. You want a holiday somewhere where you are totally accepted – whatever your sexual bent, whatever you’re into? This is it. Outside Sydney, we have probably the largest gay and lesbian population in Australia.
Want to dabble in alternate lifestyles? This place is the country’s capital for non-standard reality. Communes. Intentional communities. Co-housing. It’s all happening up here, with mini-bus tours daily to Nimbin visiting alternative lifestyle communities en route.
Need a place to chill out after a busy bout in the city? Up here, it can be almost womb-like, offering anything you can imagine in the way of recuperation — from aromatherapy to float tanks with massage, from acupuncture and aura soma colour therapy to homeopathy, from sweat lodges to exquisite day spas. Want to try something more esoteric perhaps? Then this is the place to try a metaphysical or a crystal reading, or a psychic or spiritual healing, or a cranio-sacral balancing.
But if that sounds like too much mumbo-jumbo, then you can always get physical.
To start, there’s the beaches. Nip down to Australia’s eastern-most point at Byron Bay and do the beach crawl. Tour the lighthouse, or stay in a lighthouse cottage and start the day whale watching, or exploring the kilometers of walking trails curling around Byron Bay’s fantastic north-facing surfing beaches. Ten minutes south of Byron is Kings Beach, a beautiful, secluded nudist beach. Pack a picnic and wander through a sub-tropical rainforest down to a beach with white sands, clear blue water, to great body surfing. Or watching.
If you need it, there are experts on hand to give you personal surfing lessons or surfaris, tours on Harley Davidson motorbikes, or even kayaking. But then there’s also the diving and snorkeling in Cape Byron Marine Park. The local dive centres will guide you through the Julian Rocks Marine Reserve, one of Australia’s top 10 dive sites. Or maybe you’d like to go white water rafting? A day trip away, you can ride the rapids.
This is also the place with an annual 48-hour Yoga-thon, aiding The Buttery, a local rehab centre. The local papers have heaps of ads for every form of yoga known to humankind, with experts always on hand to guide, and wonderful masseurs available, if that’s what your body is asking for.
The Northern Rivers just oozes creativity. Must be something in the water, or in the organic veggies that you can buy in the local Farmers Markets. Around the hills and tucked away in beachside hideaways, happy people are painting, taking photographs, writing or illustrating amazing books, sculpting, blowing glass, or silver-smithing, making wearable works of art from felt, carving wood, pummeling clay into pots, bringing life to bronze. They also make gardens, music and babies. Creative expression up here takes many forms, and there are galleries in every little town to prove it. The nearest Visitor Information Centre can provide maps with gallery details.
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through to Thursday Plantation’s East Coast Sculpture Show outside Ballina, not to mention Bangalow’s Billy Cart Derby for kids of all ages and its Classical Music Festival, Nimbin’s Mardi Grass and a plethora of New Years parties.Of course, a visit to the Northern Rivers would never be complete without exploring some of the local environmental highlights.
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