A Family Holiday in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Parties and poetry readings, music jams and rock-pool swims, nights of wine and laughter and hazy sun-filled days – such is the life of many young, curious Australians found in the back of campervans strumming acoustic guitars and drinking beers at the foreshore of Byron beaches. The Byron Bay region is by its nature a young person’s domain – and we all ended up here at some time or another.

'We spent two blissful days waking to mist rising off the valley and the sound of kookaburras’ laughter, swimming (in winter!) at the beautiful Wategos Beach in Byron, and exploring the Sunday market at Bangalow – a mini festival in its own right.'

This time I drove my mother’s four-wheel drive down the fabled road to Byron with my children getting antsy in the back, my husband quietly weary of my loaded relationship with the place and my mother in the passenger seat, patiently aware of how much this meant to me. From our base at Mum’s house on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Byron was an easy one-hour drive. The June sun was shining, the temperature a gorgeous 23°C – cold to my mother but perfect to us.

This was always going to be a different Byron to the one I knew and loved. But that’s not a bad thing – being a parent can be wonderful in exactly the things that it limits you from doing. We'd booked the kids into a circus skills class , but though I knew seven-year-old Phoebe would love it, I wasn’t as confident that four-year old River would be up for it. However, as soon as the engaging instructor started the warm-up games and childeen's yoga, I was thrilled to see River attentively following along, and Phoebe doing mini-jumps of joy between poses. 

We grown-ups sat in the café area and had a good coffee (well, it’s almost impossible to get a bad one in Australia), watching delightedly as the children leapt onto trampolines, walked a low tightrope, dangled from trapezes and made graceful forms on hung silk. River was a natural! Without hesitation he flung himself from the trapeze, his ribs showing in his skinny little torso as only his tiny feet held onto the bar. Phoebe was so happy I thought we’d lost her to the circus forever, and she begged to stay all day. 

There was the option of a flying-trapeze class afterwards, but the beach was beckoning and we still had to find the house we were renting for the weekend, with resident koalas and cows down by the creek. There was a Balinese-style pagoda for enjoying the amazing view of the valley and the distant hills. Soon the children were donning wellies and loading up buckets with oranges and lemons from heaving citrus trees. 

We spent two blissful days waking to mist rising off the valley and the sound of kookaburras’ laughter, swimming (in winter!) at the beautiful Wategos Beach in Byron, and exploring the Sunday market at Bangalow – a mini festival in its own right, with South American music and fairies giving tarot readings, a dreadlocked grandfather engraving rastafarian imagery into coins, an American Indian shoe-maker selling bee pollen on the side, and juice bars and chai tents and alpaca hats and candle-making for kids, and fun rides and organic avocados and kimonos. 

It was the northern New South Wales I remembered and I was so glad that despite the crazy property prices and trendy bars and lifestyle shops, this spirit of Byron Shire was still going strong. 

Relaxed and transformed, we stopped at Brunswick Heads before heading back up the coast to Mum’s. The mellow cousin to Byron, about 10 minutes north along the coast, Brunswick Heads has the aspirational interior shop and designer café thing but also old-school milk bars, op-shops, family caravan parks and a great local pub. 

It immediately felt like home to my husband, who bought a second-hand boogie board and declared he wished we could spend a week there. I hunted down an old friend's Israeli café, Yami’s – bigger and smarter than 10 years before but still offering spectacular mezze. Then we crossed the old timber bridge that links the Brunswick River (where kids were kayaking and fishing) to the surf beach and spent three hours messing about with the boogie board, having the time of our lives.

As an adult, I discovered that the lure of the Byron Shire still holds me in its thrall. But now I dance beneath her mythical moon with my husband and children and mother in tow, knowing that her oceans can still cleanse my soul and her people are still fabulous fanatics who care deeply about preserving her spirit.  

Read more about family holidays in Australia.