Main Beach and Clarkes
Patrolled, central, busy. Fine for a swim between sessions, less good for solitude. Clarkes, just around towards the cape, is marginally calmer and has the better outlook back at the town.
Beyond the court
Things to do in Byron Bay
A lighthouse walk that is genuinely worth the hype, whales close to shore for half the year, waterfalls forty minutes inland, and a set of markets that rotate around the shire. Byron rewards early starts more than any town on this coast.
The Cape Byron walk
The one everybody does, and correctly so. A loop of roughly four kilometres from the main beach up through rainforest and open headland to the lighthouse, past the marker for the most easterly point of the Australian mainland, then down to Wategos and back along the shore.
Do it at sunrise. Not because it is prettier — though it is, and this is the first place in Australia the sun touches — but because by nine o'clock in peak season the track is a queue and the car park at the top is full. Dolphins are common in the bay below, turtles are frequent off the rocks, and between June and November you can stand on the headland and watch humpbacks going past.
The lighthouse itself dates from 1901 and is the most powerful in the country. You can walk the grounds freely.
Coast
Beaches, and which one to pick
The Pass and Wategos
The Pass is the famous right-hander — long, gentle, and consequently crowded with everyone from beginners to longboarders. Wategos, tucked under the cape, is the sheltered north-facing beach and the best swim in Byron when a southerly is blowing.
Tallow and Broken Head
South of the cape, long and open, with far fewer people the further you walk. Stronger surf and no patrol on most of it. Broken Head, further south again, has small coves under the headland that feel a world away from town.
Whale watching
Humpbacks migrate past the cape roughly June to November, and because the headland juts so far east they pass unusually close. Charters run from town; the free version is the lighthouse track with a thermos.
Belongil and Brunswick
North of town, quieter, longer, dog-friendly in parts. Brunswick Heads, twenty minutes up the coast, has a river mouth, a bridge kids jump off and a main street that feels like Byron before Byron.
Diving at Julian Rocks
A marine reserve a short boat ride offshore where warm and cool currents meet, which is why divers see leopard sharks in summer and grey nurse in winter. One of the better dive sites in the country and the reason a lot of people come here at all.
Inland
The hinterland is the underrated half
Waterfalls and rainforest. Forty minutes inland the country climbs into the remains of an enormous shield volcano, and the escarpment is full of waterfalls and Gondwana rainforest — Minyon Falls in Nightcap National Park is the spectacular one, and there are swimming holes scattered through the back roads for anyone willing to drive.
Bangalow. Fifteen minutes up the hill, a heritage main street, a genuinely good pub and one of the region's best markets on the fourth Sunday of the month.
Mullumbimby. The shire's alternative heart, twenty minutes north-west, with a weekly market and a main street that has resisted most of what happened to Byron.
Nimbin and the Channon. Further inland and a longer drive, but the country between them — ridges, rainforest and small farms — is the reason people move to this region.
The markets rotate. Byron, Bangalow, Mullumbimby, the Channon and Lennox each run their own on different weekends, so there is nearly always one on somewhere in the shire.
Rainforest and falls in the escarpment country behind Byron.
A good Byron day. Lighthouse walk at first light, breakfast in town before the queues, a morning session at the Cavanbah courts, a swim at Wategos when the wind swings, and the hinterland or a market in the afternoon. Almost everything worth doing here is better before ten in the morning.