Just 30 minutes from Byron, you can capture its bygone holiday magic

There’s a “No dickheads” sign behind the bar of the best restaurant in the Byron Bay region you’ve never heard of. Which runs against the grain of some of Byron’s better-known eating establishments – like Raes On Wategos – which, as posts on Instagram affirm, hardly follow the same policy.

But out here in Eltham – barely a town, more a clump of palm trees next to an old pub – we’re as far from Byron as anyone can possibly get in 31 minutes by car. This may be one of Australia’s most publicised regions, but places like Eltham make me realise there are still as many secrets as international hotspots around here.

The Eltham hotel in Eltham, less a town than a clump of palm trees next to an old, beloved pub.Credit: Danielle Smith

I’m staying at The Brooklet, a new collective of luxury villas built along a green ridge in a little-known part of the Byron hinterland, 20 minutes’ drive from town. My charter is to avoid Byron Bay entirely. Not because I dislike the town – I don’t – but to see if you can holiday up here without any of the crowds who create traffic chaos during school holidays (I’m travelling in early January).

You see, Byron’s been famous longer than most of you think. As a kid growing up there in the ’80s, we’d escape to this part of the hinterland when Sydneysiders invaded each Christmas holiday. I call it ‘The Tintenbar Triangle’; a collection of waterholes and waterfalls and tracts of rainforest between macadamia and dairy farms, beside towns no one’s heard of, even now.

Local swim spot Killen Falls in the “Tintenbar triangle”.Credit: Destination NSW

Celebs like Liam Hemsworth live in squillion-dollar-homesteads here now; but the roads don’t look any different from 1987. Locals have erected handwritten signs to save the locals – Koalas, Slow Down!, Wallabies Live Here. Tourists discovered the picturesque hamlet of Newrybar when the now-defunct Harvest became the restaurant every trendy had to be seen at around a decade ago, but you only need drive another three minutes to find your own piece of Byron.

Here trees and vines form cathedrals over the roadway, whipbirds crack the silence and kookaburras cackle as I drive down narrow winding roads to refuges I used to love, like Killen Falls. There’s no one here as I walk along pathways through the last standing remnants of The Big Scrub (rainforest) that once covered this entire region.

Natural attractions next to towns no one’s heard of, even now … Killen Falls.Credit: Destination NSW

There are still loads of macadamia farms, and the decades haven’t changed the character of communities like Tintenbar (it’s little more than a general store, a coffee cart and a petrol bowser). But I see that towns that once offered visitors little – like Alstonville, a white-bread kind of farming township we’d stop at during tennis tournaments – now have chic cafes and restaurants set in century-old buildings (there are 17 historic buildings) on a pretty main street shaded by Tibouchina Alstonville trees, famous for their vivid rose-purple flowers. I run into a school friend, who tells me some Byron locals have moved here, to avoid the craziness of our old town.

There are changes, too, in other previously unfashionable towns of the area. On the road to Lismore, the Clunes general store sells only the very best local and premium sustainable produce and provisions, with a cellar door of barely known wines, including the owners’ son’s range (Jilly Wines). Workers in council uniforms eat pies out front, but around the side, a couple park their Porsche 4WD outside a cafe, sipping lattes beneath canopies of grapes. “It could be Byron 35 years ago,” a local tells me.

A must-stop on a culinary trail, Frida’s Field.Credit: Mia Forrest

A few kilometres east in Nashua, visitors gather in converted barn Frida’s Field to eat degustation meals prepared by former Qualia executive chef, Alastair Waddell.

But it’s the Eltham Hotel that captures all the magic of a bygone Byron, before the craziness hit: some time after Hoges’ wedding, before the Hemsworths.

Co-owner Matt Rabbidge took over the licence of Eltham’s 123-year-old pub and turned it into one of the best eateries in the Northern Rivers, while keeping all the locals happy.

The Eltham Hotel captures all the magic of a bygone Byron.Credit: Danielle Smith

“We had a bluegrass jam here last night,” he says. “You should’ve seen all the bushranger beards. We focus on pub classics but we have a specials board that rotates every day and that’s where we get to experiment.”

By 12.30pm, there are hippies in flower pants, vintage car enthusiasts and groups dressed head-to-toe in Ralph Lauren beside locals in King Gees and thongs. I order the smoked eel dip, then the best chicken parma I’ve eaten. The sun filters through the palms and the smell of something distinctly Nimbin-esque mixes with soundbites of old Pink Floyd classics. Except for the fact there’s not a single traffic jam, what could be more Byron than that?

The details

Fly
Fly to Coolangatta or Ballina-Byron with Qantas, Virgin or Jetstar. All major hire car companies operate out of both airports.

Stay
The Brooklet offers one, two and three-bedroom villas beside a hot tub, an infrared sauna and a 25 metre magnesium pool overlooking the Byron Bay hinterland – with or without meal and wellness packages – from $750 a night. See thebrooklet.com.au

Eat
Eltham Hotel is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. See elthampub.com.au
Frida’s Field offers set menu lunches from Friday to Sunday. See fridasfield.com

More
visitnsw.com

The writer travelled courtesy of The Brooklet and Eltham Hotel.