Byron Bay to Lennox Head

21 km (118 km) | 4 hr

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk ~Soren Kierkegaard

Byron Bay to Lennox Head was another ‘to die for’ day walk. I had a ‘support crew’ but there are good public transport connections at both ends of the walk. I walked with my brother-in-law, Alex, for this stretch and, after 4 days of walking alone, I was reminded of the oft-cited quote: ‘If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far go together’.

We dropped down from Walgan / Cape Byron to Tallows Beach past a handy CoastSnap camera viewpoint. Here you can get both a perfect shot of Tallows Beach looking south with the opportunity to upload your pic to CoastSnap for beach monitoring purposes. CoastSnap uses repeat photos at the same location to track how the coast is changing over time – important work.

Byron Bay Recreation Reserve, then Arakwal National Park and the Broken Head Nature Reserve back the beach and the three small but incredible beaches of Kings Beach, Brays Beach and Whites Beach came next. We dropped back down to the sand across lush Jews Head and arrived at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach. Despite the name, the beach is, in fact, less than six miles long. Newrybo Swamp and the freshwater tea-tree Lake Ainsworth back the beach and give it a beautifully wild feel despite being in the tourist heartland of the far north coast. The odd cyclist riding along the beach and a group of horse riders did add a reminder that we were not quite as ‘away from it all’ as we felt.

Arriving at Lennox Head with its dark Pleistocene coffee rock and panoramic views was a suitable reward. The Lennox Head surf club building was originally constructed on large concrete skids (still visible today) that would enable the building to be towed away by bulldozers, should rising sea levels threaten. Let’s hope that day never comes!