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From the A*List Deals Weekly Newsletter
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Australia Pacific Driving Tour
Excerpt from National Geographic Traveler: Australia guidebook
Text by Roff Martin Smith Photo by Catherine Karnow
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Dominated by the Opera House, Sydney Harbour's real name is Port Jackson. |
For deskbound Sydneysiders, the Pacific Highway is the road to adventure and sunshine, like an Australian Route 66. It meanders north along the coast toward the warmth of tropical Queensland, pausing at popular New South Wales getaways such as Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, and Byron Bay. There is a little of everything along here—World Heritage rain forest, empty beaches, tacky seaside holiday towns, garish tourist marvels, odd pockets of suburbia, hippie communes, and quiet farming villages.
*Bolded names and numbers in the text below correspond with our map of this walking tour.
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Like the real Route 66—not the one of myth—the Pacific Highway can be narrow, heavily trafficked, tedious, potholed, and in some places downright dangerous. You may have to contend with the white-line fever of truckers making the run to Brisbane, eager families hurrying north to theme park holidays at Sea World or Movie Land on Queensland's Gold Coast, and convoys of retirees towing their campers north to softer, sunnier pastures in the tropics. Forget the sweeping interstates back home. Except for the first clean sweep of freeway north of Sydney, stretching a hundred miles to Newcastle, this is road travel the old-fashioned way.
Directions are simple: Cross Sydney Harbour Bridge and keep driving north on Route 1 to the Queensland border more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) away. Newcastle (1) (Visitor information, 92 Scott St., tel +61 [0]2 4974 2999) is the first big town you come to, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) out of Sydney. It is one of Australia's major industrial centers, home to the giant B.H.P. steelworks, and the shipping port for the nearby Hunter Valley coalfields. Locals grind their teeth at the usual depiction of their town as a smoky rust belt—and rightly so. While there are plenty of smokestacks on the perimeter, Newcastle itself is a surprisingly breezy and pleasant surfing town, with wide leafy streets and good beaches. Turn off the highway here onto Route 15, the New England Highway, if you want to visit the Hunter Valley wineries (2) or explore the scenic horse country around Scone.
The highway tends to run a few miles inland because the coast here has so many inlets and necks. Most of the interesting sights require a side trip. One of the most worthwhile is to Barrington Tops National Park (3), part of the Central Eastern Rainforests World Heritage Area (tel +61 [0]2 4983 1031, turn north off the New England Hwy. at Maitland to Dungog). The drive takes you through temperate rain forests and up onto mile-high windswept plateaus dotted with snow gums and covered with alpine bogs. This back road is not paved for much of its length, so do not attempt it in a conventional vehicle after heavy rains.
Back on the coast, you have a reasonable chance of seeing wild koalas in the bush around Lemon Tree Passage, near Port Stephens. Farther north is the Koala Hospital (off Lord St.), in the tourist and retiree town of Port Macquarie (4) (Visitor information, Clarence Street, tel 800 025 935). The hospital is run by the Koala Preservation Society of New South Wales on the grounds of a historic homestead. About 200 sick and injured koalas are brought here each year for convalescence. You can visit them daily.
Ninety miles (145 km) north of Port Macquarie is the turnoff for Bellingen (5) (Visitor information, tel +61 [0]2 6655 5711), 7 miles (11 kilometers) off the highway via Route 78. This laid-back and picturesque village is tucked in the rain forest at the foot of a 1,000-foot-high (305 meters) escarpment. Once a major timber town, it has long been a refuge for writers, craftspeople, and artists fleeing city life, and it is chock-full of galleries. Many of Bellingen's old buildings have been classified by the Australian National Trust. There's a jazz festival each August and a market in Bellingen Park on the third Saturday of every month.
The surrounding countryside is dotted with organic farms and communes. Australia doesn't have a lot of chocolate-box scenery, but there is some here. If you can spare the time, cross the Bellingen River, on the edge of town, and drive ten miles (16 kilometers) or so upstream through farm country to a picnic area by the river called the Promised Land. It is spellbinding.
Equally spellbinding, although tougher on the nerves, is the drive 20 miles (32 kilometers) up the escarpment on Route 78, from Bellingen to Dorrigo (6) (Visitor information, 36 Hickory St., tel +61 [0]2 6657 2486). Lookouts along the way give views of the Pacific Ocean. On top of the plateau are the World Heritage rain forests of Dorrigo National Park. This is one of the best thought-out parks in the nation, with a rain-forest information center (tel +61 [0]2 6657 2309), a skyline boardwalk through the rain-forest canopy, and paths through the gloom on the forest floor. To get back to the Pacific Highway you can either return through Bellingen, or follow a gravel road to Coramba and then to Coffs Harbour.
By the time you reach Coffs Harbour (7) (Visitor information, Marcia St., tel +61 [0]2 6652 1522), you're far enough north to notice the difference in climate. It's warm and sultry, and rain forests and banana plantations cling to the flanks of mountains that plunge right down to the coast. The motels are gaudier, too. Coffs is the home of the Big Banana (1.5 miles, 2.5 kilometers, north of town on Route 1), a monumental piece of roadside kitsch designed to draw tourists and celebrate the banana industry. Australians have a peculiar penchant for building giant objects. More than 60 of them have been constructed around the country, and they are so breathtakingly awful and shamelessly touristy that they make you laugh and pull over, camera in hand. Which, of course, is precisely what they are meant to do. The Big Crayfish (Kingston, South Australia), the Big Merino (Goulburn, New South Wales), the Big Pineapple (Nambour, Queensland), and the Big Ned Kelly (Glenrowan, Victoria) are among the best known, along with the Big Banana. Here at the Big Banana, you can tour a plantation, buy a banana smoothie, or browse in a souvenir shop whose entire theme is exuberantly tacky bananas.
The highway drifts inland north of Coffs Harbour. Much of the coast through here is national park land, and side roads lead to quiet lengths of beach. Grafton (8), a genteel country town on the banks of the Clarence River, is kaleidoscopic in November (spring in Australia), when its jacaranda and flame trees are in full flower. You are starting to get into lush, tropical, sugar-growing country now, and as you go farther north you'll see more houses built Queensland-style—elevated on stilts to let cooling air circulate, and having wide wraparound verandas.
Not far south of the Queensland border, Byron Bay (9) (Visitor information, 80 Jonson St., tel +61 [0]2 6685 8050) is one of the prettiest places along the north coast. This used to be a blue-collar town whose main industry was the abattoir, but now it is the most popular resort town on the coast, filled with crafts, galleries, vegetarian cafés, folk music, and organic markets. You can watch humpback whales off the coast of nearby Cape Byron in June and July. The lighthouse has one of the most powerful lights in the Southern Hemisphere.
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