Australia's most easterly point, two easy-going right-handers a short walk apart, and a town that runs, unapologetically, on flat whites.
The wave
Byron Bay sits at the easternmost point of the Australian mainland, and its two best-known waves — Wategos Beach and The Pass — break within a ten-minute walk of each other around the headland below the lighthouse. Both are forgiving, longboard-friendly rights that work across a wide range of swell and tide, which is a large part of why the town became a surf destination in the first place rather than a strictly big-wave one. Mid-spring through mid-autumn tends to be the more consistent window on this stretch of coast, though the breaks are rideable most of the year.
The town above the water is a genuinely small place that’s absorbed a lot of visitors gracefully — cafés on every corner, board racks outside half of them, and a walking track around the headland that’s as much a local ritual as the surf itself.
The tea note
Australia’s café culture is real, strong, and built almost entirely around coffee — Byron Bay is no exception. There’s no resident Chinese tea programme waiting at any house on this headland; that was always going to be something you carry in, not something the town supplies. What we’d reach for after a Wategos morning is the post-surf side of this ritual — a warming, higher-caffeine red tea from a bottle, drunk on the walk back up from the beach, alongside whatever flat white the town is rightly known for rather than instead of it.