TRAVEL IS SLOWER on this winding byway. The narrow strip of grey, rough edged asphalt winds through patches of dark forest and out into open farmland, taking the traveller from shadow into light.
I cross a narrow bridge then, cresting the top of a bare hill I catch a distant glimpse of the ocean. A sharp turn and it‘s up a hill then into a long, sweeping curve that brings me to the road along the edge of the escarpment that forms the backdrop to the narrow coastal plain.
Seen from Cape Byron, the long beach to the north seems to go on and on.
Here on the edge of the escarpment 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. “Tall trees, dark forest”, comes the thought as my eyes traverse the trees and their shady interstices. “Looks mysterious, primeval even” comes a thought unbidden.
The dense, green wall blocks the view over the coast but in a few minutes I clear this remnant and approach the sharp turn that precedes the plunge to the plain. Brake, change down, into the sharp turn… and I come to a stop a little way down the hill where I pull over, pull on the handbrake, turn off the motor, get out and look on country new to me.
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It is the closing years of the 1960s and I am on the first of my solo road trips along the great highway that goes north from Sydney all the way to Queensland. It’s a long line of asphalt that takes travellers to destinations planned and unplanned, to those imagined and to others discovered only by chance. To set out on the highway without any firm idea of destination is to accept serendipity. I know that it is a type of aimlessness but doing it makes me happy.
I resist the urge to move on… I resist that senseless pull that I experience all to often, that seeks to keep me moving for no good reason at all. “Pointless urgency”, I think.
But there is some impetus that keeps me going as long as the direction is north, and I have to admit to finding happiness in traversing this ribbon of grey that links town and city, farm and coast. This is something I don’t talk about with friends in Sydney for I fear that they would not identify with such sentiment.
Road signs bearing the names of towns encourage turning off the highway and this I cannot resist. I know it makes the journey long but I am in no hurry. Obediently I turn to follow minor roads to minor towns that cling to the coast… places of old fibro houses with rusty galvanised iron roofs… of men and women standing patently on piers with lines curving into the water, their gaze and minds elsewhere… of people taking the morning sun on long yellow beaches. These are towns the images of which assume a sameness in mind and, given only a little time, blend together into some composite of Australian coastal existence.
This is all part of the joy of movement over long distances… it is refreshing, it is exhilarating, it is freedom.
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I close the door and look out over the little patchwork of roofs down there, where the coast turns abruptly to climb as a headland atop which stands a tall white lighthouse. Stretching north, a long way north from that cape all the way to a horizon concealed by sea mist is a beach that seemingly goes on and on.
“Something special about this place”, I think, looking out over it for the first time. I stay here awhile, propped on the bonnet of my small grey car. Then I drive into town.
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“Bit like other towns on the coast”, comes the thought as I drive slowly past houses, some old, some newer but most of them older structures of painted weatherboard. Here and there are people — families on their annual holiday from the city; older people, presumably retirees and not particularly wealthy looking, the type you might find around the bar of an RSL or a football club; and younger folk in couples or walking along in small groups.
A sharp left then a sharp right and soon I realise I’m on the main street. It’s a town of low buildings, Byron Bay. Old timber houses turned into shops, cafes and milk bars. There’s an intersection where the road turns north, towards Queensland, but I keep straight ahead and come to a large car park behind the beach. To my left is the town’s swimming pool and I wonder why people would swim in its chlorinated waters when there’s this beautiful beach a few metres away. And there’s that headland with the lighthouse I saw from the escarpment above.
“So, this I Byron Bay”, I think as I get out and lock the car before walking into town.
There’s a temporariness about this place. Is it the buildings of wood and iron? The way the town sits on the very edge of the land as if about to topple into the sea? Is it something about the ambience of the place? Yes, it’s like other coastal towns, insubstantial in some way. There are a couple solid-looking buildings, both hotels, and there’s that old two story timber place on the intersection where the road takes you north. A bit run down perhaps, it appears to have been here awhile. As for the town centre, there’s nothing of great substance there.
I had seen other places on this journey north. Earlier today there had seen Lismore, a sprawling, sleepy place with a lazy feel about it basking in the heat of the summer sun. If you stop and listen, I imagine, you would hear the crack of iron roofs expanding.
It was a more substantial a place than Byron Bay and had a feel of having been there longer… there were those old houses whose timbers have greyed with the years, long ago having become a stranger to paint. Its city centre, too, I found a slow place completely lacking any sense of bustle or urgency. Different way of living here, I thought.
It — Lismore — wasn’t an unpleasant place but I didn’t say long and set off on the road to the east and up into the hills. But once up there I stop because the land t0 the west lay revealed… rolling country to a horizon of blue mountains that form a distant edge to the view. What are they? What’s out there among them? Where are they? What do people do out there? Thoughts come and go unanswered. Maybe, one day, I’ll go out there and find answers to these questions.
Then there was Bangalow, a town that spills down a steep hill. It occupies a bowl in the landscape that opens to the east and driving into town from Lismore the steepness of the main road is such that you need to apply your brakes lest you zap through town so rapidly that you find yourself in open country again before you know it.
Byron Bay — town by the sea. I drive up to the lighthouse and see that long beach that seems to go on and on. I look south over bush and beach to a distant headland.
I stay, but not all that long. The road continues and I must get back onto it.
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It’s a decade later and I am a long way from Byron Bay when I pick up a book of short stories by Australian author, Craig McGregor. I’ve encountered his writing before, quite by accident, and I liked it because it was life translated into stories… I would like to be able to write that way myself one day, I think.
I start to read, then I encounter something familiar, something I imagine I have experienced years ago. The realisation comes as a sense of familiarity that starts as a vague tingling feeling then grows into a dawning of realisation.
It was this. McGregor, too, followed that winding strip of grey asphalt that joins Lismore to Byron Bay and he, too, stopped at that same place on the winding downhill run, just past that patch of rainforest, and looked over that same view of coast, cape and lighthouse.
This must have been some years before I did the same but what was pleasing to find was that he, too, experienced some sense of place on that road where it descends the escarpment to the narrow coastal plain below.
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More years pass… many of them. I drive that long road north again and, turning eastward at Lismore, eventually come to that bare hill atop the escarpment. I brake and curve into the sharp turn… and come to a stop a little way down the hill where I pull over, pull on the handbrake, turn off the motor, get out and look on country now better known to me.
Below is that town that I first saw from the escarpment all those years ago as a patchwork of roofs amid trees. And here, on the headland, is that white lighthouse. The difference is that, this time, I have come to stay.
Many times I drive that same winding road that descends the escarpment but only occasionally now do I stop to look. When I do, memory takes me back and I again feel that same sense of being here.
Yes, it is still the same view, the same long beach stretching far to the north, a view largely unchanged from when I first looked upon it. Yet, it is always a new experience, a landscape seemingly unchanged but a mindscape that sees the familiar as if for the first time. The difference is that this landscape is now home.
Byron Bay. Discovered and rediscovered.
