The Gold & Sunshine Coasts of Australia

The Australian road show continued north along the #1 highway of this continent's East Coast. We found it amazing how strong an influence the water is on the everyday life of Australians – they truly worship their water sport heroes and tend to focus all their recreation on water activities (Aussie Rules Football definitely is like the NHL in Canada too!). We have experienced some of the same type of water-based lifestyles in Hawaii, California and other beach towns that have bred some of the great "watermen" – but here in Australia it goes to another level with swimmers and surfers making front page news. The Bell's Beach ASP World Cup Surf event is on down in Melbourne this week and all the buzz was on the TV and newspapers that Kelly Slater saw the forecast for a big swell and was now a late entry for the contest. Each town we stopped in has a huge surf club set on the beach which is also the center of their recreational and social lives. Where kids are left on their own or within peer groups to learn ocean activities in other regions, in Australia they are taught from an early age within this surf-club structure the ways of the ocean. The result is a much more rounded water culture and a much stronger respect for the general rules of surfing. The "surf punk" of California or the tough guy local surfers of Hawaii are attitudes you do not see here – even though the surf breaks are equally as crowded. Generally we experienced good people with great attitudes living wonderful healthy lifestyles.

We focused our trip north from Seal Rocks (see below) to three main areas that really captured the soul of the Australian water sport culture. All are towns built around big headlands with bays facing north. This shelters them from the prevailing South Easterly winds and also grooms the swells that run up the coast and wrap into these bays making some of the best surf breaks in the world (very similar to the south facing bays of California and Baja that we all love to surf at):

Byron Bay/Lennox Heads: In the north end of New South Wales we rolled into a famous surf break called Lennox Head and found a camp site set between a lake and the ocean. The lake is mentioned as it is a very unique "tea-tree" lake that has the leaves of tea-trees all around it fall off and stain the water dark. We swam in the lake and it was very spooky – you can not see your feet in knee deep water and when you dive in and open your eyes 6 feet under it is pitch black and only a faint light from above when you look up. It is apparently very healthy for your skin & hair and the locals all love to take daily dips. The Surf at Lennox was unfortunately blown out with on-shore winds and relegated us to a Yoga session on a beautiful desolate headland point – but the pictures in the local shops and cafés showed that this is one of the true great point breaks of the world. Lennox lies just 15 minutes from Byron Bay and we ventured north with one pit stop to visit a friend we met on our trip to Bali, Sva, and his partner Christa. They live on a great spread of land set at the end of a dirt road and along a water cannel that leads to the ocean, surrounded by a forest with amazing birds, pet donkeys and roaming Wallabies. They are ex-pat Canadians and have fallen in love with the lifestyle and culture around Byron Bay. Sva directed us to a Clark Beach Campervan Park, which could not have been in a more ideal setting – right on the beach and in the main part of the bay where all the surfing action takes place. The headland of Byron is the most Easterly point on the continent (see pic.) and the town of Byron is a lot like Paia in Maui, where a strong hippie and surf contingent found this beautiful spot and settled here in the 60's and 70's. As they matured and mellowed, the town has developed but without many chain stores. Lots of backpackers, travelling surfers and the drumming hippies still around that combined with the tourists making it a fun place to hang out. One of the regular sites on our caravan trip are vans rented by a company called Wicked Travel – which had offices and a big hub office in Byron. The vans they rent all have very colorful paintings and graffiti that is both thought provoking and somewhat brash and definitely catches your attention (see pic – a more tame example). The surf at the bay has many options – from beach break along the main section to mushy beginner peelers over shallow sand bars in the bay, long boarding point break fun off "the pass" and ripping fast long waves off Wategoes at the top of the headland (and where all the rich n famous vacation – Elle and Mick are regulars!) and then on the South of the headland is yet another long deserted beach that works when the SE winds are not blowing (See the panorama picture taken from the lookout over "the pass" that shows the entire view looking 180-degress from South to North – Watagoe Beach down through Byron Beach).

Coolungata was the next stop - located right on the border where you enter Queensland and the famous Gold Coast, where things start to get bigger and busier. This is home to the famed surf breaks Snapper Rocks, Super-Bank, D-Bah and Kirra. The ASP Surf Tour contest was here just two weeks ago and even on a blown out not so good day, you can see the amazing set up this huge point is for surfing. Like Byron Bay, there are about 10 choices within 1km to surf. Mark went right for the main point and jumped in with a pack of about 100 surfers – saying he has never seen a congregation of that many good surfers in one place in his life. He ended up working his way down about 5 different sections of surf over a couple hours. Check out the video that shows the set up around the Snapper Rock point: Note that Mark identifies the buildings way in the background as Brisbane – but they turned out to be Surfers Paradise, which we drove in and out of as quick as possible (over developed and very touristy – like Waikiki or Miami).
Noosa at the top of the Sunshine Coast was the next stop. We ran straight into Easter weekend traffic leaving Brisbane heading North to the beach – kind of like the rush to the Okanagan on a summer holiday weekend, with us stuck in a 3 lane highway that ground to a dead stop. We diverted to surface roads and got to drive by Steve Irwin's famous zoo on the way – but too late in the day to stop. Arriving into Noosa, we instantly found its appeal with a long strip of great restaurants, shops and nice accommodation. We awoke at our caravan park at 6am on Good Friday to get a head start on the beach crowd, but when we arrived at the main lot it was already full by 7am! Another example of the active, water-loving culture they live by. Noosa had the biggest mix of water based activities in one place we have seen so far. Paddle boards of all types – prone, sit, stand-up, surfboards of every type and size, boogie boarders, lessons, long distance swimmers and a massive Noosa Surf Club house anchoring most of the action along with the biggest contingent of life guard's you have seen outside of a Baywatch episode! The holiday made the surf crazy crowded – but great to see the set up of the famous Noosa longbord wave (we saw one guy on a standup board with his dog catch about 10 waves – see picture and on the farthest wave out - the puppy was fully gripping the nose hanging 10!) and further up to a series of great right hand point breaks that are all great world class waves. Noosa is a little more glitz and high end than Byron but with an even broader water sport lifestyle it is very appealing – somewhere we both agreed would by an amazing place to live (their record all time low is only 11C and average cold days are 21C!!).
The Campervan was a great way to see the east coast and really touch into the varied communities of the region. The coast has endless caravan parks with fantastic locations. One surprise to us was the high cost of living in Australia – especially food costs! A basic meal for two at an average bistro costs about $50-$60 w/o drinks – needless to say we used the campervan kitchen facility as much as possible. We are off to Papua New Guinea today for a week at the "Dalom Surf Retreat" – about 3 hours from the small port of Kavieng which is on a small northern island of PNG. The most remote location of our entire trip and we will be staying in a village guest house where we will have access to 100's of spots to dive, swim, surf and explore in what is known "the final frontier" of remote terrain on this planet.