Buck’s Shed
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Explore I NORTHERN RIVERS 5
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Murwillumbah
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Tyalgum
Mavis’s Kitchen
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Tweed’s natural beauty
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Sydney has been buying from Buck for nearly 20 years). Head too for the village of Tyalgum. This former cattle town has become a haven for free spirits, and boasts a quaint café, bookshop, day spa and shops housed in restored weatherboard cottages. A sign over one shopfront proudly declares, “Tyalgum is my Tuscany”. Every road trip through the region should include a turn off onto Mount Warning Road to plunge into the tangled forests surrounding the peak. Breakfast Creek car park at the top is the start of the popular Lyrebird Track and Mount Warning Summit Track. Go early as it can get crowded with day-trippers. Uki, at the foot of the mountain, has the same blend of quirky and quaint found in so many local towns, with homey cafés and an arts precinct in a heritage butter factory. Be sure to pull over at Guinea’s Farm Stall, where you can buy the fruit and vegetables the Guinea family has been growing in this area since the 1800s.
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Mullumbimby
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BYRON BAY
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Where to stay: The two-storey Queenslander that houses Mavis’s Kitchen was uprooted from Brisbane and trucked to the property off Mount Warning Road in pieces. It now overlooks sloping lawns and a thriving kitchen garden. Cabin guests are invited to pick from the garden for their own cooking. maviseskitchen.com.au
MAP INDICITIVE OF POINTS OF INTEREST PHOTOGRAPHY HUSK DISTILLERS, LINDA CUNNINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHY
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WHILE THE BYRON hinterland offers more than its share of jaw-dropping scenery, nature really starts showing off as you head north toward the iconic silhouette of Wollumbin Mount Warning at the heart of the Tweed Shire. Wollumbin marks the epicentre of an ancient volcanic explosion, which left behind the Southern Hemisphere’s deepest caldera, filled with rainforest, cane fields and paddocks. The Mount Warning View Circuit (one of the Rainforest Way’s tourist driving routes) takes you west to Chillingham, where Gerald “Buck” Buchanan and his wife Anne have run a thriving fruit farm for more than four decades. The perpetually barefoot Buck nurtures an extraordinary array of exotic and native fruits, including Australia’s only year-round crop of finger limes, selling them and homemade beauty products at his roadside fruit stall the Banana Cabana and supplying the nation’s best restaurants (Tetsuya’s in
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