About Byron Bay

Accommodation

What to do

Transport

Eating & drinking

Photos

Byron Bay

Byron Bay Lighthouse

Byron Bay is located 800 km north of Sydney and 170 km south of Brisbane, and it has made an interesting transition from whaling industry to hippie haven to a trendy modern holiday destination, populated by alternative lifestylers and cashed up crowd that got tired of city living, like Elle Macpherson, Olivia Newton John and Crocodile Dundee.
The lighthouse on Cape Byron is the first place in Australia to see the new day, it stands on the most easterly point of Australia’s mainland, and is a great place to watch the sunrise.

Byron Bay's main attractions are the beach and its waves, it is a great surfing spot, and its cafes and generally just hanging out enjoying the scene. During summer months the town gets a bit crowded and congested and you should book your accommodation and tours well in advance. And if you plan to join the Newyears Eve celebrations here you need to plan even further ahead, the police usually blocks off the main road to stop people overcrowding the town!
Finding your way around is pretty easy, just about everything is situated along or just off the main street Jonson Street; shops, cafes, restaurants and accommodation, and the main beach is also reached along this street. Beaches run all the way from here up to the Gold Coast for about 50km.
There is also a nudist beach here named Tyagarah Beach, and you can spot dolphins right near the beach and also whales during the migrating season as they pass Cape Byron around June/July and September/November.
The local population likes their town just the way it is, and when Club Med and McDonald's wanted to move in public pressure and the overwhelmingly green Byron Shire Council made it very clear they were not welcome and succesfully kept them out.

Byron Bay used to be known as 'cavaba' by the traditional owners, the Banjalang Aboriginal tribe but, like most places along the east coast, was renamed by Captain James Cook on his journey up the coast in 1770, after Vice-Admiral John Byron who was the grandfather of the famous 19th century poet, Lord Byron.
After Cook had passed it took until 1928 when Captain H.J. Rous arrived and gave the bay to the north of Cape Byron the name Byron Bay. In the 1840s timber cutters arrived to cut down the huge red cedars in the hinterland which kept them busy until the 1850s. The actual Bay was slowly settled by Europeans starting from 1869 and settlers were extremely happy to discover that the rich soil was perfect for growing bananas, pineapples, corn, potatoes, basically anything. By 1886 the town of Byron Bay was now starting to happen and shops, hotels, pubs, a jetty and a post office were built and in 1890 the town got connected to the outside world by railway. Other milestones in the town's history include 1901 when the lighthouse was built and 1962 when they stopped whaling off the Byron coast. Nowadays the local economy is tourism and surfboard manufacturing.