Girls Weekend along the Gold Coast-Byron Bay and Surfers Paradise

At the end of July I was sitting with my new French friend Zoe on a rooftop bar in Melbourne on a Sunday night and we were discussing travel (as you do with other foreigners also living in Australia). She was telling me that her and her friend she met in Sydney were planning a weekend trip to Byron Bay, along the east coast of Australia at the beginning of August. It was only a few weeks away, but she invited me and spontaneously I said yes! I had only met Zoe a week before through another friend and had never met her friend Marion, but I had been dying to go up to the Gold Coast (the stretch of stunning white sand beaches along the east coast, north of Sydney) for ages and thought why not? I still had a day of time in lieu left to take from the expedition in June so the next day at work I booked Friday August 8^th off and we booked our flights!

I flew into Coolangatta Airport along the Gold Coast early the morning of August 8^th and waited for Marion for a few hours in the airport. She was flying in from Sydney, and was due to arrive later than me. Marion and Zoe are both from France and had been au pairs in Sydney for several months which is how they met. Zoe moved to Melbourne in June and met one of my friends, who then introduced us. We got along really well, so it worked out perfectly that her and Marion planned this trip up to the coast because it meant I had some travel buddies! Once Marion and I found each other at the airport, we got a free shuttle into the city to our car rental place, picked up our car and drove 45 minutes to get to Byron Bay. Zoe had flown in to Byron Bay the previous day and was waiting for us there. Byron Bay is a beautiful coastal town in New South Wales (close to the border of Queensland), about 9 hours north of Sydney. It is the kind of town you think of when you picture Australia…barefoot ”surfer dudes” walking around town with long flowing hair and no shirts, a beautiful white sandy beach, cool restaurants and bars all along the main strip and the most incredible sunsets and sunrises over the ocean. It’s quite touristy in the summer and offers surfing lessons, paddle boarding, kayak tours and whale watching tours. We went during the winter however, so although there was still a bit of a bustle to the town, it was not over-run with tourists and still had quite a relaxed feel to it. Once we got to Byron, we met up with Zoe at our hostel, dropped our stuff off in our room and headed straight to the beach! We picked up take-away lunch on the way and sat on the beautiful beach while we ate it. As I said, it was the middle of winter and we had been living in Melbourne and Sydney, which do not exactly have “beach weather” that time of the year, so it was quite exciting for us to be there. We were all very giddy and content, since it really hit us then that we were on vacation. 

Byron Bay beach...where we ate our first meal of the vacation

Marion had been to Byron Bay several months before but she had gone with her host family for one of their friend’s weddings, and she was there to look after the kids. This meant that she had seen a bit of the town but had not had a lot of free time, so she had a list of things she wanted to do. That suited Zoe and I fine because we let her do the planning for what we would do and see there since she had a much better sense of the town than we did. The main to-dos on her list were to see the sun set and rise from the Cape Byron lighthouse. The Cape Byron lighthouse is an active lighthouse on a point, about 3 km northeast of the town of Byron Bay. The cape is the eastern most point of the mainland of Australia, so was obviously somewhere we had to go! There is a nice walking trail along the beach to get there from the town, but it was already 5 pm and we only had 30 min before the sun was due to set, so we decided to take the faster route up to the lighthouse which was along the road, a little further from the water. We had lost track of time while enjoying our lunch on the beach, and had to really book it since we wanted to see the sunset from the cape. We realized we weren’t going to make it however, and we didn’t want to miss the amazing colours while we were on the road, so we cut in toward the ocean and decided to watch it from a point a few kilometres away from the lighthouse. It was a stunning sunset! There were clouds in the sky, which meant the rays of sun and colour of the sky was just beautiful! We stayed and watched it for a long time, unable to pull ourselves away because of the constantly changing sky. 

The sunset over Byron Bay

Once it was dark, we headed back down to the town along the beach and went to our hostel to get ready for a night out. Byron Bay has two main “backpackers” and young bars. One is a club called The Cheeky Monkey that’s good for dancing, and the other is called Railway Friendly Bar which is more chill and has an awesome beer garden outside with live music on the weekend. Because Byron Bay is so small, those 2 bars are in all of the guide books and are recommended by everyone who had been there before, so we had to check them out. First we went to the Railway Friendly Bar and sat outside, drinking our beer and cider and listening to an awesome folk band. It was a lot of fun and was really bumping! There were so many people there already and it was only 8 pm. We knew that had to be a good sign for the rest of the night! We then went to The Cheeky Monkey just to get a stamp so that we wouldn’t have to pay later on when we wanted to go dancing there. They had cheap drinks until 9 pm however, so we went inside for 3 dollar cocktails (which is unheard of in Australia!). We then headed back to the hostel since The Cheeky Monkey wouldn’t get busy for another hour or so, so we sat at a long table in our hostel courtyard and had some drinks with some of the other backpackers. It’s always fun to sit and hang with other travellers because you meet such interesting people from all over the world and have the most fascinating conversations! A little later, we all headed back to The Cheeky Monkey and had a great night dancing and singing our hearts out. It was so nice to have a fun night out with some girlfriends since it had been cold and miserable in Melbourne for the past few months and people didn’t tend to go out much so it had been a while since I had done that.

The next morning, we were up at an un-godly hour…5:00 am!! We rolled out of bed, hopped in the car and drove up to the Byron Bay lighthouse so we could watch the sun rise from there. It’s a really popular thing to do while visiting Byron Bay, so there were tons of people there by 5:30 already! The Byron Bay lighthouse is a working lighthouse and is the most powerful lighthouse in Australia. It’s on Cape Byron, so it has 360 degree views of the ocean and beaches in every direction which is what makes it perfect for watching the sunrise. We were there for an hour and it was the most peaceful and beautiful morning I’d had in ages! The sunrise was stunning, with constantly changing colours. I even saw a fin of some type of whale or dolphin pop briefly out of the water while I watched the night turn into day. Once the sun was completely up, we drove down to the beach and did the rest of the coastal lighthouse walk that we hadn’t been able to do the night before. It was a stunning walk, with dramatic cliffs, crashing waves and beautiful sunshine. We went all the way back up the lighthouse then back down again and once we got to our car we drove back to the hostel. We ate breakfast, packed up our things and checked out.

What a way to wake up! 

Cape Byron lighthouse 

The dramatic cliffs along the coastal walk from Byron Bay beach to the lighthouse 

We were driving to Surfers Paradise, where we were staying that night, as it’s only a few hours north of Byron Bay along the Gold Coast. We decided not to go straight there, but to take some detours through several national parks to do some rainforest hiking. There are several national parks in the Gold Coast hinterlands, and they are part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. The drive from Byron Bay to the first park we went to, Springbrook National Park is absolutely stunning, because there are mountains covered in lush rainforests, ancient trees and spectacular waterfalls every way you look. Our first stop was in Springbrook National Park, where we did a short circuit hike to get to Natural Bridge. Natural Bridge is a waterfall that falls through a hole into a cavern below. You can see it from both the cavern below and the waterfall above. It was once a normal waterfall falling over a cliff, but over time the water eroded away at the basalt cliff and broke through, falling into the undercut cavern below. The rest of the cliff remained, forming a natural bridge, or arch. The colour of the water is spectacular-it’s so green, it doesn’t seem like it can be natural. Apparently it’s filled with glow worms and is an amazing thing to see at night, but we didn’t have the time to stick around that long unfortunately.

Natural Bridge 

After that walk, we continued driving up the mountains to get to Lamington National Park. The Lamington and Springbrook plateaus and cliffs are the northern and western remnants of the huge shield volcano called the Tweed Volcano, which dominated this region 23 million years ago. It is filled with craters and peaked ridges and mountains, now covered in rainforests. From high up in Lamington National Park, you can see across Numbinbah Valley to the ocean, with the high rise buildings of Surfers Paradise on the coast. It’s a really spectacular sight to see the towering skyline behind all of the natural beauty. We did several hikes in the rainforest, with some incredible lookouts. It was so nice to spend the majority of our day in the rainforest, with colourful (and loud) birds and some of the most ancient trees in the world.

At a lookout in Lamington National Park overlooking one of the biggest peaks in Numinbah Valley 

The rainforest hike in Lamington National Park-very different vegetation than what I'm used to when hiking at home!

After we finished hiking, we drove back down to the coast and up to Surfers Paradise. Surfers Paradise is the Gold Coast’s entertainment and tourism district, with high rise buildings along the beach, casinos, expensive restaurants and hotels and night clubs galore! It’s kind of like the Las Vegas of Australia, where all of the backpackers flock to for surfing and partying…the stereotypical image of Australia that a lot of travellers have. When we got there, we checked in at our hostel then made our way straight to the beach! It was evening at this point, so was too cool to swim, but we walked along the stunning white sand beach, which was kilometres and kilometres long and watched the sunset. We then walked along the main stretch in the city, a pedestrian-only street called Cavill Mall. This is where most of the restaurants, shops, clubs and bars are. Surfers Paradise is not what I would call a “nice” city…it’s extremely touristy and tacky. The kind of place where you see pink stretch hummers flying down the street with music pumping out of their stereos and party animals hanging out their windows...we definitely saw our fair share of them. But it’s the gateway to the amazing Gold Coast beaches, and is a place everyone should see at least once, so we couldn’t miss it. After we had explored the city a little, we stopped at the Hard Rock Café for their happy hour, and the 3 of us sat out on the balcony with a bucket of Heinekens (don’t worry, it was a small bucket). We watched the hustle and bustle of the city, as the day became night and the city began to come alive! We headed back to our hostel for the 2 dollar barbecue we had been promised earlier…and it did not disappoint! We got 2 snags (the Australian word for sausages), BBQed onions and salad all for 2 dollars and we were beginning to see why backpackers love this place. Our hostel was going on a club-crawl that night, since that’s what people do in Surfers, but it was too expensive and crazy for us so we met up with a woman we had met the previous night in Byron Bay and went to a more relaxed Irish pub in town for some drinks. It was a great pub with live music and tons of fun people. We even met a guy in a kangaroo suit on the dance floor….in case we had forgotten what country we were in.

The iconic Surfers Paradise Arch 

Surfers Paradise Beach with some ominous looking clouds.

The ladies kicking back with a bucket of Heinekens after a long but awesome day of walking and exploring.

The next morning we woke up pretty early, ate the free (and extremely limited) breakfast the hostel provided then hopped in the car to do some beach hopping! The Gold Coast is an area that stretches from Coolangatta, right on the border of New South Wales up to Beenleigh, less than 30 minutes South of Brisbane. The whole coast is 56 kilmotres long, and is one of the best surfing coasts in Australia, with the most amazing beaches all the way along. We weren’t flying back to Melbourne until 9 pm that night, so we decided to use that day to check out all of these famous beaches along the Gold Coast. The first beach that we stopped at was Miami Beach….which was obviously quite exciting and meant we had to take a lot of pictures of the Miami signs. It was a beautiful white sand beach that stretched for miles! It wasn’t a surfing beach but was great for swimming and sun tanning.

Miami Beach with the Surfers Paradise skyline in the background.

The classic "vacation memento" in the sand-no trip to the beach is complete without it.

Enjoying the famous Queensland sunshine!

Throughout the day we drove along the coast and stopped at several more stunning beaches including Burleigh Heads beach (which is one of the best surfing beaches in Australia) and Kirra beach. We ended at the border between Coolangatta (in Queensland) and Tweeds Head (in New South Wales). The reason we wanted to go there was because it’s the border between the 2 states and they have a monument there with a line running through the middle so you get to stand with one foot in QLD and the other foot in NSW. When we first pulled up to the parking lot at the lookout above Coolangatta beach we saw a huge crowd of people standing at the railing and pointing towards the water. I grabbed my camera and ran as fast as I could to the railing and was far from disappointed! There, not far from the beach, were 2 humpback whales swimming around!!! I had heard that we might see humpback whales somewhere along there because they migrate along that coast during the winter. I was hoping it would happen but tried not to get my hopes up because I figured it was unlikely and we weren’t going to pay for a whale-watching tour. So needless to say I was feeling extremely lucky and excited! We watched the whales for about 20 minutes! They just hung around close to shore for a long time before heading further out to sea. They flipped their tails and flippers for us and spouted water….it was incredible!!! Best part of the trip for sure!

Burleigh Heads-one of Australia's National Surfing Reserves. This is looking back to the way we came with Surfers Paradise and Miami Beach in the background.

The two humpback whales we saw! One of them was doing a cheeky wave towards the crowd.

After watching the whales for a while, we went to check out the monument between the two states and got to stand with our feet on the different sides of the states which was pretty cool. We then got sushi and ate it at a picnic table by the beach. It was so cool because we had driven a while down the beach, but it curves around so from where we were sitting we could see the high rises of Surfers Paradise in the distance with miles and miles of beach in between. It was a pretty amazing sight!

Standing with one foot in New South Wales and the other in Queensland!

Not a bad place for a lunch break...

We then drove back to Surfers Paradise, checked out of our hostel and walked into the city centre to see the sunset. It was on the other side of the city from the beach, but because there are rivers all throughout the city we still got to watch it set over the water which was really nice. We then wandered past a pub that was serving a free BBQ so we had sausages, fried onions and salad for the second night in the row, but it was free so we couldn’t pass it up. After dinner we went to the beach where there was a stunning super moon! Seeing the super moon’s reflection on the calm ocean was really cool. They had night markets along the esplanade where people were selling literally everything under the sun (or moon in this case)! There was some really good food and beautiful homemade crafts and art work but there were also some tacky and hideous touristy knick-knacks as well. Zoe and I then had to say goodbye to Marion and dropped her off at the hostel because she was staying for another day then we drove to the airport and flew home. The flight was delayed so I didn’t get home until after 1 am then had to go to work the next morning. So needless to say I was pretty exhausted. We pushed ourselves pretty hard over the weekend but saw so many amazing things and did tons! They were great girls to travel with because we were all on the same page for everything and wanted to see and do as much as we could but it was still so relaxing and refreshing! Overall, a really fantastic weekend!

The last sunset of the weekend over a river in Surfers Paradise

The super moon over Surfers Paradise Beach-look how bright it was!