THE extensive waterways in and around Yamba had attracted our attention when we’d first seen that section of the coastline while travelling along the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane in 2013. Known as the Clarence Coast, this region is just north of the Gold Coast. It is a little less frenetic than the world-famous holiday and surfing resorts that make up the beautiful but busy Gold Coast. We also wanted to see the unique littoral rain forest, conserved within Bundjalung National Park, in Yamba’s neighbouring town of Iluka. Then there was a third reason for choosing Yamba for a two-night stopover before returning to Brisbane to spend the last few days of our Australian holiday with our family. We wanted to do the Yamba parkrun.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the parkrun movement? It is a global keep fit initiative and a simple but really clever concept. In a nutshell it involves volunteers identifying 5km trails through park-like surroundings, registering them as parkrun venues then using them to host regular, free, timed 5km runs (walkers are also welcome) every Saturday morning. at the same time (usually 8am or 7am). When you register as a parkrunner you receive a unique bar code that you use when you do your home parkrun or when you complete any other parkrun anywhere else in the world. Your times and the amount of runs you complete are then automatically recorded. As an incentive to take part regularly, parkrunners who complete 50, 100 and 250 runs receive special T-shirts. Bill and I have both earned the T-shirts by completing more than 100 runs and it really has been a wonderful adventure.
Our home town, Uvongo on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, is one of about 80 parkrun venues in South Africa and we usually line up there on Saturday mornings. It is also fun being a ‘parkrun tourist’, trying out other parkruns, and we have done quite a few others in South Africa. Now we were trying out parkrun, Australian style. By the time we reached Yamba we’d already spent three Saturdays in Australia and had been able to find three different parkruns to do. When we were planning this, our second mini camping trip, we had wanted to round off our Aussie trip with a ‘full house’ by doing a fourth parkrun on our fourth and final Saturday in the land Down Under. Yamba with its park run had fitted the bill perfectly.
The twin towns of Yamba and Iluka, both stunningly beautiful, are situated north and south, respectively, of the impressive Clarence River estuary. Yamba is a laid-back seaside resort complete with gorgeous beaches and lagoons, attractive river frontage, a wide range of holiday accommodation and plenty of interesting shops and restaurants. It attracts crowds of sun worshippers, beach lovers, surfers and fishermen and is a perfect family holiday destination. Iluka, on the other hand, is a peaceful little hamlet and a favourite with nature lovers as it is situated alongside the Bundjalung National Park, which protects a valuable strip of rare, ecologically important and environmentally sensitive littoral rain forest.
The towns are only a five minute ferry ride away from each other but on land are separated by a roundabout drive that takes over an hour to complete. We would like to have camped in the Bundjalung National Park but it would have been too difficult to pack up our tent and drive to the start of the parkrun before the 7am starting time. Instead, we set up camp in Yamba’s Calypso Holiday Park, a large family-orientated resort that offered camping and caravan sites, as well as self-catering accommodation. Situated on the edge of the estuary it was a stone’s throw away from the main swimming beaches and the central business area. Best of all the start of the Yamba parkrun was right next to our camping site. After booking in at the holiday park on Thursday afternoon we took the scenic drive to Iluka and spent the rest of the day exploring the national park’s impressive forest walks – and ticking off some interesting avian forest dwellers. It was well worth the drive. Back at camp we spent a wonderful evening watching a glorious sunset and an amazing amount and variety of birds coming in to roost in the large trees in and around the resort.
With all the travelling we’d been doing we decided to leave our roof top tent set up the next morning and to explore the pretty town and its lovely shoreline on foot. The area around Yamba boasts no less than six beautiful swimming and surfing beaches as well as an extensive network of paved or grassed beachfront and riverside walkways, so we did plenty of walking, in spite of having to dodge the odd rain storm. After an afternoon swim and a restful hour or two in camp, we strolled back into town and bought a takeaway supper at one of a number of fish and seafood outlets in the town. We enjoyed an excellent fish and chips supper, another gorgeous sunset and a repeat performance of the amazing evening avian fly-in. Australian birds tend to be noisy. With hundreds of screeching lorikeets, a large flock of squawking cockatoos and quite a few chuckling kookaburras and other very vocal birds coming in to roost, the amazing spectacle was a rather raucous one.
So was the dawn the next morning. Our feathered neighbours served as flying alarm clocks and we were up bright and early. Our camp was all packed up and our vehicle ready to roll by the time we joined the knot of people waiting at the Yamba parkrun start. We always find parkrunners are friendly people who go out of their way to make visitors feel welcome and the Yamba parkrunners were no exception. It was a scenic and enjoyable route with a bunch of great people of all ages and fitness levels and we were pleased we’d made the effort to do it. As well as helping us to keep fit while we were travelling, the parkruns had proved to be a perfect way to meet Australians, too. We set off towards Brisbane after the parkrun and took a quick look at the pretty Angourie surfing reserve on our way back to the main road. We had decided to go straight home without visiting any Gold Coast resorts. It being a Saturday, our son, daughter-in-law and grandson would be home and we wanted to spend as much of our remaining time in Australia with them. By lunchtime we had successfully negotiated the busy city traffic and were safely home after our wonderful, five-day New South Wales camping trip.
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