While researching for ‘Things to See in Australia’, LightHouses were one thing that caught our attention (well, apart from Kangaroos and Koalas!). As you might know, Australia is home to some of the most magnificent light houses and so we made sure we visited a few, but it was Cape Byron Lighthouse that took our breath away! It stands gloriously at the easternmost point of Mainland Australia attracting tons of tourists every year.

 

 

 

If you have been following our Australia travel stories, you’ll know that we were based in Brisbane for the first leg of our trip and though there are a few tour companies which offer day trips to Byron Bay along with a visit to Gold Coast and a few other places, we as always, decided to visit this place on our own 🙂
* Honestly, we feel these tours are expensive and inflexible. Are we the only ones?!

 

 

We booked a return journey with a private shuttle service, Brisbane2ByronBay after readings its reviews on Trip Advisor and must say that the overall experience was terrific. The drive was fantastic, you don’t have to worry about anything and it makes you reach the destination exactly in 2 hours. They have a huge luggage carrier attached to their mini bus in case you are travelling with suit cases or even surf boards.

 

 

 

 

 

The bus dropped us near the city centre and we were told that we could find taxis which would take us up to the light house in a jiffy, but sadly we couldn’t find any taxis and for some reason my Uber app wasn’t working ( it didn’t work on my native sim card, which was on international roaming, but later worked perfectly well on my other phone which had a local sim). Because we didn’t have too much time to waste, we finally decided to hike up the trail which goes through several beaches and scenic viewpoints.

 

 

 

Just as we began our hike up to the lighthouse, we found this really cute alley with graffiti and halted to take some pictures…we obviously had heard and seen about the graffiti lanes in Melbourne, but this was a great surprise and a completely unplanned thing.

 

 

 

The best part was that it wasn’t crowded at all… it was like we had the entire lane to ourselves and we really did make use of it and clicked tons of pictures.

 

Coming back to the hike, well the hike started off as being pleasant but soon turned into a treacherous ordeal as the winds coming in from the sea were so strong that every time we halted at a beach or climbed up a viewing tower we got hit by sand granules and it was like several tiny needles pricking our faces, but that didn’t stop us… the views were magical! Once we reached the lighthouse, we honestly felt that it was one of the best hikes we had done till date 🙂

 

 

 

 

Pro Tip – If you are going to do a lot of walking in Australia make sure you carry your own pet bottle, we found several water refilling stations wherever we went. The idea is to discourage buying packaged water from shops to curb the use of plastic.

 

 

 

 

If you search the route on Google Maps, it by default shows a route which will take around 45 mins to reach to the lighthouse from the tourist centre, but am sure it won’t be the most scenic walk. We took the Cape Byron Walking Track and halted at several view points and even though it took us around 2 and a half hours to hike up to the lighthouse, I feel the views were worth it and something we would have missed if we followed the path shown on Google Maps.

 

 

 

 

 

We were famished by the time we reached the lighthouse and found a great snack shop from where we got a yummy quiche, a lemonade and an ice cream! (You’ve got to reward yourself, right?!)  They have a really nice seating area with a view of the lighthouse, so I highly recommend grabbing a bite here… You can also get some really cool pictures for your Instagram with the lighthouse in the backdrop 🙂

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwYyrwNFrdX/

 

 

After rehydrating and reenergising ourselves we roamed around the place, took some more pictures, enjoyed the views, made some stories for Instagram and were finally able to book an Uber for our way back to the city centre. Our Uber ride was there to pick us up within few minutes and it took us just about around 7 minutes to get down to the City Centre. We realised we still had a lot of time at our hands and decided to spend some time at the beach and roamed around the main drag.

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt0JXz4FTgu/

 

 

 

This little town has a very chill, cozy vibe. As we sat on the beach, we watched people taking a dip in the ocean, people gathering by the public grill with beers cooking meals together, parents playing with kids in the park… it was such a lovely sight and we couldn’t have asked for a better way to say goodbye to this wonderful little place. We would love to be back here someday … and maybe catch the sun set over the lighthouse!