The Byron Bay File…
Byron Bay: Discovered and rediscovered
A coast, a hill, a town and a landscape discovered and rediscovered. A story written 15 years ago, the first of the Byron Bay File.
TRAVEL IS SLOWER on this winding byway where it passes through patches of dark forest and out into open farmland.
I am following a narrow secondary road as it makes a sharp turn to cross a short bridge then climb a hill. Cresting, I catch a glimpse of the ocean before the road makes a long, sweeping curve that follows the edge of the escarpment. Up here a farmer has retained a big patch of subtropical rainforest of the type that once covered this rolling country. I slow to take a closer look. My eyes trace the trees and their shady interstices. Looks mysterious, primeval even. The thought comes unbidden.
Passing the forest I approach the sharp turn that precedes the downhill run to the town. Brake, change down, into the turn… and stop. A little way down the hill I pull over, pull on the handbrake, turn off the motor, get out and look over country new to me.
Road trips
It is the closing years of the 1960s and I am on the first of my solo road trips along the great highway that takes travellers north from Sydney all the way to Queensland, a long line of grey to destinations planned and unplanned, to those imagined and to others discovered by chance. To set out on the highway without any firm idea of destination is to accept serendipity.
There is joy in movement over long distances. It is refreshing. It is exhilarating. It is freedom.
I know my doing this is a type of aimlessness but doing it makes me happy. There’s some impetus that keeps me going as long as the direction is north. I find a sense of… what?…curiosity?… adventure?… in traversing this ribbon of grey that links town and city, farm and coast. Road signs bearing the names of towns pull me off the highway into places I never knew existed. That makes the journey longer, but I’m in no hurry.
I follow minor roads to minor towns that cling to beach and headland, small settlements that, come Christmas, fill with families camped in caravans and tents. Between those holiday influxes they are quiet places where people seem content to go fishing and to live their lives doing who knows what else. I like stopping in them. There is an ambience about these places that is so different to my life in the city.
When I started making these road trips north, I remember driving into the approaches to Murwillumbah and, in my then-city centric way, wondering how it was that people could live in those old wooden houses with their rusty galvanised iron roofs in a place that seemed so quiet. I sped on north towards Brisbane, towards another big city. How my ideas about rural life would change over the coming years.
There is joy in movement over long distances. It is refreshing. It is exhilarating. It is freedom.
The town
Here on this high vantage point I close the car door and look out over the patchwork of roofs crammed together at the southern end of a long sandy beach that merges into the sea mist far to the north. Nearby is the headland atop which stands a tall white lighthouse.
Something special about this place, I think as I stand and look out over it for the first time. I stay awhile, propped on the bonnet of my car. Then I drive into town.
It is more than a decade later that I pick up a book of short stories by the Australian author, Craig McGregor. I start reading and a tingling sense of familiarity comes over me. McGregor, too, stopped at that same place on that downhill run into Byron Bay and, as I did, looked out over that same view of coast and cape.
There was something about that place that made it stick in mind over the years. Many of those years pass in the city until that day I become a resident of the town I first saw from the escarpment. Many times I drive down that hill but only occasionally now do I stop at the top, park and remember being there that first time. In doing that, past connects to present and place, and leaves me with a deep feeling of contentment.
Recently, I did an online search for Craig McGregor, trying to remember the name of that book I read where he describes stopping at this same place on the hill. I didn’t discover the book, but on the Penguin Books website I discovered something else, something about where he came to live. And where was that? Byron Bay. It was like a story repeated.
From here on that hill that descends to the narrow coastal plain it is the same view but it is always a new experience, a landscape seemingly unchanged and a mindscape that sees the familiar as if for the first time.
Byron Bay. Discovered and rediscovered.
The Byron Bay files…
- Byron Bay: Discovered and rediscovered
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