Heading North: Port Macquarie, Byron Bay & the Gold Coast

Posted: December 23, 2005 by Paul

We made our way up north along Highway 1, which follows the coast for most of the way to Brisbane. Our first night was in Port Macquarie, a small coastal town popular with Sydney beach holidayers. It was great to unwind at the beach after a day’s driving, and we were able to find some really fresh seafood (king prawns and "bugs", which I’d been wanting Adriana to try) that we gorged the next day when we were up in the mountain rainforest up along the Waterfall Way.

The next day took us to Coff’s Harbour, which didn’t do much for me – the beach was good though, and there was some big surf running so I spent a few hours body-surfing.

This huge goanna joined us for lunch! Our picnic spot for lunch.

We had just one night in Byron Bay. It was really difficult for us to find somewhere to stay, and I was amazed just how touristy the town has become since I was last there (admittedly that was a long time ago!). The next day we took a detour to beautiful Mount Warning National Park. The mountain is an old extinct volcano and its slopes are covered in lush, tropical rainforest. We took a few hours to hike the lower half of the track to the summit.

It was a bit of a sentimental moment to return to the Gold Coast. My grandparents retired up there and we used to visit them for a week or two for several years when I was a young kid – good memories!

Left: Adriana polishes off a watermelon. We’d just bought a couple of kilos of fresh king prawns and about a dozen Moreton Bay "bugs" for lunch, and we drove to this rocky headland looking over Burleigh Heads to dig in. It was a great meal with fantastic views.

Right: The view from Nobby’s Beach (near Miami Beach) north towards Surfer’s Paradise. My grandparents retired just a few hundred metres from here, and we used to visit them each year when I was a kid.

On our final morning in Queensland we went to Currumbin Sanctuary for a good dose of Australian fauna. It’s a great place to see everything in one spot, and it didn’t disappoint!

Sleepy. Big Red.