Australasia > Australia > New South Wales > Byron Bay > Articles > Aussies? Sophisticated?

It's official. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Australians have become sensualists; their tanned bodies bronzing in the sun, sipping vibrant wines, savouring innovative Mod Oz cuisine, indulging in the sweet physicality of life in their remarkable country. The archetypal Australian male, once raw, indifferent and content to chug schooners of Tooheys in front of a pub slot machine, now luxuriates in Balinese massage and skin care products. Australian women revel in eco-bushwalking, float parties and Keith Tulloch's honeyed Semillon. I wanted to touch this new Australia - and maybe even be touched back. So I decided to feel my way up the Pacific coast, taking an hedonistic week to explore the most sensual stretch of Australia.

I started in back-slapping, thigh-stroking Sydney, the sybaritic capital of the southern hemisphere. An urban-chic breakfast at Bills, a sizzling sail around the harbour, an icy vanilla martini at Fix, and finally an evening dancing under the stars at Hugo's. Between the city's sheets mingle the laid-back and upbeat, the rough, the refined and a potent potpourri of ethnic bodies.

I wanted to lie back and indulge myself on the 650-mile journey to Brisbane, and to avoid the frustration of complying with Australia's restrictive speed limits. There's little pleasure - for me - in rubbing up against unreformed Aussie policemen. So, instead of renting a car, I boarded a CountryLink XPT train at Central Station.

From the outside the XPT, based on the familiar British Intercity HST, brought to mind numbing rail journeys, the whiff of chips and hiss of earphones - a raw assault on the senses. But once settled into my ergonomic TGV seat, very different sensations took hold of me. The under-crowded, air-conditioned train departed on time. Sunlight caught the top of the Harbour Bridge. Pumpkin ravioli and Thai chicken curry were served in the buffet car.

Two hours' north of Sydney, the Hunter Valley is Australia's second most visited tourist spot - and undoubtedly the tastiest. The Barringtons and Broken Back ranges encircle the rich, rolling countryside. King parrots perch in wild olives and kangaroos spring through the vines. Over one hundred wineries are concentrated in the area, most of which welcome callers at the cellar door. Ben Lewis, whose Grape-X-pections specialises in 'boutique' tours tailored to his clients' taste buds, collected me at Maitland station.

“I'm passionate about Michael Winbourne's Cabernet Franc,” enthused Ben, driving along a gravel road to the Valley's smallest, hidden vineyard. I'd asked Ben to introduce me to his favourite Hunter wine. “It's seriously like an angel pissing on your tongue.”

Michael Winbourne once built power stations in the Yemen, making his own wine in the bath to circumvent the strict alcohol ban. The experience ignited a passion for wine-making and on his return home he and his wife established Jackson's Hill Vineyard: planting the vines themselves, pruning them by hand, drafting in help only during the harvest. Their eight acres produce less than a 1,000 cases a year which sell out in weeks to devoted customers as far afield as Edinburgh and Alaska.

“Wine-making is never going to make me wealthy,” Michael said, “but it's enriched my life. It's given me 20 or 30 extra years.” In his earth-brick cellar he decanted a glass of his 2002 vintage, a few weeks from being bottled. It roared with that 'full-on' Hunter taste, reminiscent of cinnamon, nuts and spices, a subtle oak enhancing the fruit and hiding the burn of the alcohol. “All wines are good for you,” insisted Ben Lewis, unable - like me - to spit away the divine mouthful. “But this Cabernet is so delicious it may even cure cancer.”

Back in Maitland is another of New South Wales' luscious secrets, tucked away between a Goodyear Tyre Centre and the Henny Penny Drive-thru. Twenty-one years ago the rotund English chef Ian Morphy, a former Michelin Guide inspector, and his Australian wife Jenny bought the dilapidated Old George and Dragon hotel. Among the colony's oldest coaching inns - its liquor license is no. 4 - the beautiful sandstock building had fallen on hard times. The Morphys restored it, decorating the historic rooms with eighteenth century antiques and oil paintings, creating one of the finest restaurants in the state.

“When we started, locals couldn't see the value of what we were offering,” said Jenny. “When we introduced foie gras, they thought we were crazy.” But Ian soon earned a reputation as the ‘fussiest’ chef in the Hunter Valley. He created hearty, adventurous dishes suited to country appetites and won over the sceptics. On the evening that I visited, the menu included feuilleté of Balmain bugs - a kind of succulent, meaty lobster - in a vanilla butter sauce, kangaroo steaks with green peppercorns and poached Tasmanian salmon cooked in oysters and champagne.

At the next table a herd of cattlemen raved about the roast Woodville duck. In the adjoining dining room a flock of sheep farmers, holding hands with their wives, discussed the merits of the truffle risotto with fennel and Harvey Bay scallops. The pleasure shone in their faces. I ate smaller and smaller mouthfuls, not because I was losing my appetite, but to extend the sensation of remarkable tastes. “Our local vintners eat with us too,” said Jenny. “But they always need a driver to take them home after negotiating Ian's wine list.”

The next morning I almost missed the train, dawdling over breakfast. I felt satiated and in need of exercise. In New South Wales there are 193 national parks and reserves, from deserted beaches to desert landscapes, fur seal sanctuaries to the Blue Mountains. I set out to find one spectacular example, no further than a kookaburra's flight from the rail line

Beyond Maitland, the train skirts the Great Dividing Range, with its sweep of temperate rainforest, then snakes down through the snow-gum hills on to the north coast. Coffs Harbour's most celebrated resident is Russell Crowe. Visitors might catch sight of the Gladiator catching rays on Jetty Beach, but they're more likely to spot a Wallaby. The fragmented, stop-over town is home of the Wallabies Rugby Union Club - no New Age metrosexuals here. It’s also the home of a concrete Big Banana, Australia's silliest tourist attraction.

But above the glitz and kitsch rises luxuriant Dorrigo National Park, a World Heritage rainforest with hundreds of miles of trails for over-fed travellers. Its dramatic Skywalk reaches above the canopy of palms, strangler figs and thick woody vines to command a breathtaking forty mile view to the ocean. Steam rises after the dawn rains. Whipbirds crack their long, rising 'whip' cry. At the Canopy Café I managed not to eat a second plate of kakadu plum 'bush tucker'.

By Day Three my appetite had returned so I let a bronzed Aphrodite buy me a glass of Tyrrell's Semillon in the buffet car. Generations of surfers have trained, hitched or flogged the VW Kombi north from Sydney to reach the endless string of superb beaches beyond Ballina. This - as Aphrodite explained – is the Land of the Long Right-handers, with some of the best surfing in the world.

Byron Bay, a vibrant meeting-place for alternative cultures since the 1960s, revealed itself as a sensualist's Eden. Beneath Cape Byron, million-dollar villas rise above simple beach huts, athletic surfers mix with dread-locked Greens. Beach boys and babes stretch and preen and wait to catch the next, best wave. Watego's Beach offers soft, easy, 'right-hand' breaks protected from 'messy' southern swells. Lennox Head presents long, hard-core waves with lashings of 'grunt'. The temptation to drop one’s clothes, sprint along the sand and leap into the sea is irresistible, even for the non-surfer. The clean briny smell rises with the swimmers, the swells filling the air with steamy vapour.

In this Paradise Found more touching goes on than almost anywhere else in Australia: at the energetic clubs and bars, in the Aveda Day Spas, at the Ambaji Wellness Centre. New Age therapies abound, as well as more traditional physical activities.

Visitors can learn to surf, kayak with dolphins and scuba-dive in the Julian Rocks Marine Reserve. But most Australians come to Byron simply for sex, in this intimate, lustful, relaxing utopia of glorious sea and beaches, the sand stretching forty miles or more up the coast, interrupted only by headlands and the mouths of rivers.

For music lovers, Byron is also home to the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival; “the coolest festival in the world”, according to Steve Earle. Now in its 14th year the bluesfest has become a pivotal event in the Australian music scene. Every Easter weekend 25,000 fans descend on the town to listen to over 120 international performers including the likes of John Hammond, Arlo Guthrie and Ben Harper.

After a day in Byron - or was it four? - I planned to go straight on to the Gold Coast, or Miami-on-the-Pacific, but I was waylaid by an Earth Mother. The bumper sticker on her rainbow-painted Honda read, 'Gone Crazy Be Back Later'.

Inland from Byron the high ridge roads offer spectacular views of lush hidden valleys. Beyond Dunoon - the macadamia capital of Australia - unfolds a rolling dairy country of tin-roofed homesteads surrounded by dusty purple mountains. Every third Sunday of the month, the children of Aquarius soak up the vibes at the 'Nearly Normal' Nimbin village fair. On sale at the psychedelic stalls are magic crystals and tie-dye frocks, 'cosmic' didgeridoos and cuttings of grow-your-own Buddha's Belly bamboo. An odd-bod acoustic band plays Santana beneath a massive Moreton Bay fig tree. The aroma of local 'Mullumbimby Madness' marijuana lingers in the air.

Thirty years ago Nimbin hosted Australia's Woodstock, the ten-day Nimbin Aquarius Festival. Ten thousand young people arrived in the town for 'a mind-blast on a national scale'. Hundreds of them stayed on, establishing the Tuntable Falls Co-operative, aspiring to fulfil their “vision quest for a world of caring and sharing”.

Today Aboriginal dreamtime murals adorn the village shop fronts. The Hemp Embassy works to create 'a safe, fair dealing place where buyers and sellers can relax together, sampling and trading their wares'. The magic mushroom-inspired Nimbin Museum, with a campervan crashing through its front door, is probably the world's most chaotic, eclectic and unfocused museum. But no one seems to mind. Legal Happy High Herbs are sold inside. Outside, illegal varieties are on offer.

Gloria Constine, the bare-footed, long-limbed Earth Mother, assured me that what makes Nimbin special is the villagers' ability to sense the needs of the planet. “Just touch it,” she said. “Take off your shoes and feel the life energy of the earth.”

Nimbin's other unmissable sensation is the annual Mardi Grass Fiesta. Hippies, ferals and by-standers take to the street in a kaleidoscopic parade calling for cannabis law reform. Hash brownies are sold at the cake stall. Traditional games include throwing the joint, running with a fifty kilo sack (away from the police) and trying to flush the largest stash of 'green' down the toilet. “Some residents weren't into competitive sports,” explained Gloria, “until we offered more attractive prizes.” Competition winners are appointed judges for the Best Home-grown Dope contest.

The CountryLink XPT runs through plantations of sugar cane and passion fruit. Beyond the gold-tinted windows the sun reflects on glassy black creeks and banana farms, broad seascapes and hidden coves. Cattle wallow in water holes. Flocks of lorikeets scatter into the trees. Then an unbroken line of high-rise hotels and suburbia announced our arrival in Brisbane. For this would-be sensualist, it marked the end of the line - and a last embrace - with touchy-feely Australia.

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