Minyon Falls & Byron Bay

Next morning we packed up early as we off to Byron Bay to check out this beach side Hippy town. Many people you speak say it has lost its character and it certainly appeared that way. The drive there was spectacular driving through rain forests on the way down to the coast.

A toilet stop outside of Casino provided a chance meeting with the local Noxious weed officer who’s job is to log weeds. But today he had to canoe 12km down a creek to record weeds, sounds great. Tina spotted some incredibly damaged larger Gum trees near here and the guy explained that they had a hail storm last week 1.2km wide front that destroyed 100year old trees like they we twigs. 18inches deep hail not far from where we were. He gave some great local advice about creeks and camping spots in this region of Beaudesert area. We have noted these and will be back to check them out some time. Casino & Lismore are both very large towns and a little strange to see after all the time we have spent bush.


We drove over the last hill and there it was Byron Bay, well it is certainly pretty and the first time we had seen the ocean for nearly 3 weeks. We looked around picked up a couple of souvenirs and headed off to Brunswick Heads just a little further up the coast. We will head back there and spend a couple of days camping near the beach to try some ocean fishing.We logged a camping spot from the Camps book into our GPS, fueled up off we went.

Byron Beach

The road was very windy and busy and then turned to the dirt road we had expected. We lost the Satellite link near the turn off and could not find the road. So after a couple of U turns and driving past the same spot we spotted a driveway which we assumed was the road 4WD was engaged and a sign 4km Winding road greeted us. This was no bloody road it was a 3km climb straight up the side of a mountain. The road has wash out drains about every 50m and the Tojo scrapped the Towbar over nearly everyone. To my right a 600m shear drop so the only option is just keep going 3km up a mountain in 1st gear. I’m not sure who was the most scared but I didn’t want to let Tina know I was scared to. This was the most scary track I had ever driven and I would not want to drive down this track under any conditions. Then we made it to the top relief at last. Well for 1 second at least at the top the mountain the National Parks have closed the road and there was no going forward. It’s a pitty they couldn’t put that sign at the bottom of the hill. Well my worst thought came true and we turned around and started the decent. Low range was used and the Tojo crawled down the mountain perfectly. A little disheartened we programmed in another location near this spot and drove there. Luckily this one was open and about 2 hours late and 100km further we made to the same spot.

We camped in Whian Whian State forest. This place has great facilities including gas BBQ’s or wood ones.