See also: General Information
about Australia for Visitors
Introduction to the North Coast of New South Wales
Located
in the far north eastern corner of the state of New South Wales (NSW),
with the Queensland (QLD) state border immediately to the north, the
region is often referred relative to its location within
the state of NSW as "the far north coast", "Northern Rivers" or simply
"the North Coast".
Easy to get to and well served by plane, road and train services, the region is within 90 minutes drive of an international airport at Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, and just a hop (literally!) across the state border from the Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta, which offers daily flights to/from all mainland capital city airports.
International visitors can fly into Brisbane and drive south if Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Melbourne, or west if South Australia and the "Red Centre", are the planned destinations.
If you're planning on flying into Sydney, you can fly or drive north to the region, then continue onto Fraser Island, Noosa, Port Douglas, Cape York and the Great Barrier Reef, before flying out of Cairns.Major destinations in the region include Byron Bay, Murwillumbah, Ballina, Brunwick Heads, Lismore and the twin towns of Tweed Heads in NSW and Coolangatta on Queensland's Gold Coast.
New South Wales State Rail Countrylink train services travel from Sydney to Casino where you can transfer to coaches for Lismore, Bangalow, Byron Bay and Murwillumbah. Queensland coach/rail services to Robina Station transfer at Murwillumbah.
National, regional and local coach operators providing daily services use the Pacific Highway (the nation's major east coast highway), with pickups and setdowns at all major regional towns, including Ballina, Byron Bay, Lismore and Murwillumbah.Plentiful accommodation ranges from camp sites to farmstay through to award winning luxury retreats. Would you prefer to be at the beach or in a rainforest? Take your pick, it's all here.
There are many day tour operators providing diverse experiences. Choose from coach tours providing traditional style tours to a number of scenic spots and tourist attractions, or for the more individual touch, go with a 4WD tour.
And if you'd rather drive yourself, there are a number of local guides and maps with tour routes and scenic drives detailed, available from local tourist information centres, service (petrol) stations and newsagents.
There is ready access to numerous National Parks and Reserves, including five of Australia's World Heritage National Parks, which are part of the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves of Australia (CERRA) World Heritage listing.
With the highest densities of species in Australia in many families of flora and fauna recorded, these parks are amongst the best that Australia has to offer, with spectacular scenery and walking tracks which range from short 200m circuits through various types of rainforest, to challenging overnight and longer treks for the experienced, through huge areas of pristine wilderness.
Information on the towns and villages of the region, is available via our clickable imagemap.
Additional general information on Australia and our region is available at General Information.
For more information on accommodation, attractions and tours our Wollumbin Visitor Guide is a good place to start.
