Brisbane is one of the most popular routes in Australia. But Michael Laanela went searching for new adventures around every corner.

New England- Heading North

Hunter Valley Winery

On a humid sticky afternoon, the day before Australia Day in January, we crawl out of Sydney via the back route. It seems to take hours but finally we pass the last of the subdivisions and mini-malls and the land begins to spread out before us. We turn north for the mountains and at last the city seems lost behind us.

We have a week on the back roads to Brisbane and we were relishing the uncertainty of what we might find. To keep it free we've fixed only a start and a finish. Whatever happens in between we've left up to the road to decide. For now though we are startled by the wildness all around. The narrow Putney mountain road cuts through the remoteness of the Wollemi and Yengo National Parks. Both are surprisingly free from development so close to the city. From the highway we catch glimpses of rivers disappearing into lush forest that we can only dream of exploring. Then it's down the other side into the farmlands.

For tonight we are aim for the Hunter Valley, just near Pokolbin, in the heart of winery country. The Hunter Valley YHA even has its own boutique winery and we tried a bottle with some homemade pizza cooked in the wood-fired oven.  

Country music time in Tamworth

The next day we stretch our legs on the short trail up to the smouldering coal seam of Burning Mountain, before making time up the New England Highway to Tamworth. It's Australia Day and in Tamworth that means country music time. When we pull into town the annual festival is in full toe tapping swing. Roy Rogers look-a-likes are line-dancing on the main street while buskers, and snake handlers and junior jackeroos with bull whips are entertaining the crowds. Although not everyone is authentic country, under the hot sun a cowboy hat seems like the only practical option.
 
The town is booked out, so we camp by the river with a few thousand others. A few days pass in a blur of cold beer, lively bars and possibly too many country bands. Although we give it several tries, we never quite learn to line dance, but somehow this doesn't seem to matter - few of the bands ever learn to sing.

Heading up the highway to the university town of Armidale, with its historic streetscapes and peaceful air as the uni students are on holiday.
 
There are plenty of parks to explore in the hills to the north of Armidale as we head to the Queensland border so we stay a few days in the area. A long drive up a bush track takes us into Basket Swamp falls. We were expecting solitude but instead we spend the morning swimming in the pools with a crowd of new age hippies. In the afternoon we climb the cousin of Uluru, a giant granite monolith known appropriately as Bald Rock and get a view of the land. It's cooler in the forested hills, but the summer heat is still reaching us so on the way home we treat ourselves to another swim at Boonoo Boonoo Falls.

The next day is our last and we turn off the main highway and take a back road over the mountains and through the rainforest into Queensland. It's a day of sudden changes. Within a few hours we descend from the mountains, the towns start to run together and the familiar smell of a city replaces the clean country air. Like the rest of the trip, the changes in the land come quickly. Inevitably by nightfall we are rolling into Brisbane, once again in the tight clutches of a city.

Pacific Highway - Heading South

Surfing the coast

Cape Byron lighthouse

For good reason the coast between Sydney and Brisbane is one of the most visited parts of the country. For thousands of natives of NSW it means summer escape. For planeloads of overseas visitors it means beaches and sun. For me personally it means surf. Like thousands of other lemmings I headed to the water's edge to find my own personal escape. Like each of them I discovered whatever you're up for, you'll find it somewhere on the East Coast.

With two weeks up our sleeves, we left behind the eternal summer of Brisbane, heading south on the coastal route heading for our own home in the bigger smoke to the south. First stop was a couple nights at the often-maligned Gold Coast. It was hard not to go bug-eyed by the towers. It all seemed so big in a narrow sort of way, like an entire mega-tropolis had been planned, but only the beach front veneer had been built.
 
To be frank, anyone who goes to the Gold Coast expecting anything other than hype, excitement, and brash in your face living is plain naive. We figured we'd just play along for a few days. To get into the spirit we decided to hit a theme park. In the summer heat the water slides seemed the best ticket. The water was cool and the rides were scary. Then we got kicked out of the kiddie pool for rough housing and the rides got even scarer. It nearly knocked us right back into childhood.

The next day was hot and sunny. Taking a cue from the weather we decided to check out the ultra-cool surf scene at Kirra beach. It was early Monday morning when we pulled into the crowded parking lot. Didn't anyone around here work I wondered. Out on the break a couple hundred surfers drifted past the strong current, catching a couple waves before washing in at the beach and walking up to the point to start over again. The surf was the best of the whole trip and the sun was out. I paddled out and quickly realised I was in way over my head. To make matters worse I spent the rest of the holiday nursing sunburn.

We left the next morning for the Springbrook Plateau, driving up a curvaceous mountain road, catching one last glimpse of the glittering towers below before we disappeared into the clouds. In the shrouded mountains we spent two days walking the cloudy forest trails. It was just enough time in the Jurassic forest to forget about the rest of humanity struggling down below in the sun. Unfortunately a plan to drive over and climb nearby Mt Warning was cancelled by a torrential downpour, diverting us instead back to the coast, this time at Byron Bay.
 
As we pulled into the legendary beach town, it seemed in danger of flooding, not just from rain but from tourists. In recent years heavy development has changed the once quiet fishing village into a brash sort of new age resort. Pretty much everything was on offer, from hang gliding to flotation tanks. Remarkably, despite the hype, the town still manages to operate in Byron's famous laid back way.

I was busting for a surf, but I thought I better broaden my horizons so I booked a day of diving. Although the area doesn't have the coral of the Barrier Reef, the diving out at Julian Rocks Marine Reserve is a sure way to meet some big and slightly scary creatures. In the relative shelter of Byron 's Bay, leopard and wobbegong sharks, octopus, eagle rays and giant cod were easy to spot. Many travellers learn to dive in Byron so they can see the whole reef as they travel north.
 
For surfers, Byron's excellent clean waves are like manna from heaven. Most cars in town sport a board or two, and the breaks are crowded. At the Pass generations nearly collide as old beer bellied longboarders double as pylons for agile grommets. From the landmark lighthouse one evening we watched longboarders escaping the line ups of Wategos’ beach by paddling out for a half a mile, to catch massive rogue waves breaking on sand banks in the open bay.

From Byron we headed to Lennox to recover from all the excess hedonism. Despite its proximity and great surf it seemed still just a quiet beach town with near empty beaches. Seeking more of the same, further south we began purposefully stopping at small town milk bars or fruit stands on the highway and making time to chat to the locals. Increasingly we took coastal diversions off the main highway to discover unsung beaches and clear cool tidal rivers for afternoon swims.

By the time we pulled into Coffs Harbour we were chilling to an easier vibe. But our newly acquired sense of equilibrium was short lived. The next morning we caught a bus up through the banana plantations behind town. On the banks of the Nymboida River we piled into a tiny rubber raft with a bunch of like mind masochists. I thought the water was a bit low, but the fearless guides knew the way through, bouncing the raft like a pinball down the canyon. When we got out at the bottom I felt a great deal of gratitude to my helmet, but also like I had some outstanding personal issues with some of the rocks that I would never get to settle.
 
Further south and hot on the trail of the lost mellow vibe we headed inland and drove up into the hills again, this time to Bellingen and Dorrigo National Park. Here was a town that still had what Byron had lost. A chilled bush vibe without all the crowds and the hustle. The hostel, one of the finest on the East Coast, is the creation of two former world travellers who came home to create their version of hostelling perfection. It has an open-air plan, free guitars and optional open air sleep-outs in the rainforest.

Last stop before Sydney was Port Macquarie, a quiet former penal colony. For the first time we got a sense of the history on the coast. Walking through the old cemetery, a plaque of the buried revealed how many young convicts had died in the hard first years. Plaques told how former penal officers and free settlers meanwhile acquired property and wealth. These days Port has a string of beautiful beaches to offer new arrivals, leg irons not required.  Early the next morning we popped into NSW's only Koala Rehabilitation hospital. In the simple facility elderly volunteers lovingly nursed road injured and fire orphaned koalas back to health for release into the wild. At the 7:00 am feeding we got a run down on how Jim Bean and the gang were getting along in their favourite trees, about youthful escape attempts and grouchy babysitters. Still, no government funding - hard time to be a koala in this age of rapid development and economic rationalism I reckoned.
 
From Port we had to make time. As we cruised the highway began to thicken like a black vein underneath us. One lane became two and then finally three. Soon the thumping metropolis of Sydney would be in sight and all the worries of home it entailed. Like thousands of others I had escaped to the East Coast. True, I had to share my escape with a few thousand others, but in the end I'd seen my own version of the coast all the same.