TeamJD

Happy birthday to Zach who is 11 years old! We hope you had a wonderful day and look forward to catching up with you soon. xx After an early morning yoga session with a distractingly beautiful teacher (google ‘Ananta Yoga Byron Bay’ for proof! seriously though, really nice class) we made our way to the town of Mullumbimby. What a cute name. Its Aboriginal meaning is ‘small round hill’. It was a nice surprise to find that the local Saturday market was in full swing when we arrived. We whizzed around it as we didn’t have much time before checking in to the lovely Kiva Spa. This place is a little gem: it’s a Balinese inspired day spa where you can either just use their grounds (two spa pools, an icy plunge pool, sauna with fairy ... read more

Lennox is so gorgeous that, for the first time during our trip, we reversed our travel direction and headed back south for a couple of days.There were no regrets and it was definitely worth it! I went to a Sivananda yoga class with www.yogawhitelotus.com in the beautiful circular ‘loft’ at the Lennox Head Community Centre. It was the Sivananda tradition that got me into yoga several years ago and it was so lovely to come back to it. The teacher, Madhava, had actually lived, trained and taught at the Sivananda Yoga and Vedanta Centre in London which I used to go to. Small world! I’d highly recommend White Lotus to anyone in or passing through the area. The next morning we headed back to our lovely little gym, checked ... read more

We woke up to beautiful sunshine and a stunning view of the ocean and a seemingly never ending beach… so decided to hang around Lennox Head for the morning, before driving on to Byron Bay. Lennox is just gorgeous and flew straight onto the ‘wonderful places’ list. It is unspoilt, relaxed, friendly, beautiful and peaceful. Its ‘centre’ is literally just one long strip of shops opposite the beach but there is much more behind the scenes. Being fairly upmarket and modern, Lennox has a very cool Cultural Centre and you can tell it’s got a great community spirit. There is so much on offer - from cookery classes to every imaginable type of yoga – that you could keep busy for quite some time. We tried out the local gym and ticked off the need for ... read more

On our way to Yamba, only about an hour’s drive from Grafton, we stopped in at Maclean. This town has a strong Scottish heritage which is apparent from the moment you arrive. The power poles are painted with all the different Scottish tartans, there is a Cairn with plaques displaying clans’ mottos, the street names are written in English as well as Gaelic and there is a Highland Gathering each Easter! Neither of us had expected to find such a place in Australia and I felt strange ‘rediscovering’ my own Scottish roots.Sadly the Maclean Historical Society, housed in a quaint 1879 stone cottage, was closed while we were there but we admired the view from the lookout and drove around the town checking out the tartans on the power poles. This part of NSW is the ... read more

Unbelievably we made it out of Bellingen! The morning we left was quite funny because somehow I managed to stall us so that we didn’t get out of town until lunchtime. I seriously did not want to leave (how hard can it be to persuade a boy that this is the place we’re meant to be and it’s ok to abandon our travels?!). So I had an extreeemely slow breakfast… took foreeever doing the washing up… remembered I needed to go to the shops… and post a letter… and go to the cash machine… then fell in love with a couple of houses before realising they were both for sale (a sign or what!)… and then took us on a drawn-out drive around the outskirts of Bellingen… and 9km of gravel road to see the farms… ... read more