Welcome to Bangalow, NSW a small town in the Northern Rivers region of Australia in the Byron Shire. The town is 765 kilometres north of Sydney and 167 kilometres south of Brisbane, just off the Pacific Highway.

Outside my Front Door is a series of posts by fellow travel bloggers who share what is … outside of their own front door

Ben Alcock of Disarm Doors is an, Australian travel industry fellow who likes it different. Tree-changer. Story teller. Problem solver. Game show contestant. Rugby tragic.

We live in ‘country’ New South Wales, Australia. Right up in the north of the state, just beside the coast, a hop-skip-jump from the Queensland border and the bright lights, temptations and cheap souvenirs of Surfers Paradise. I say ‘country’ because, well, it’s a small town, but one inhabited by Tree-Changers – an urbany folk who have brought bits of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and mixed them with an overwhelmingly welcoming community of locals. The result is a small, engaged community bursting at the seams with creativity and genuine down-to-earthiness.

We have lots of the stuff of small Australian towns: Cute main street, a terrific pub, community hall, a Showground, a Country Womens Association, a weekend growers market, a Bowlo and Heritage Museum with Tea Rooms. Picture. Perfect.

Bangalow, NSW Xmas Street Fair

Yet woven right through it is a calendar of events that ignites the community (and visitors) and brings this place to life. The Billycart Derby, the Show, Sample Food Festival, the Christmas Eve Street Carnival, the Music Festival, Flickrfest, and the massive monthly Market give the year a sequence of anticipated events and markers that note the passage of time.

Around us we have the stunning beaches of Byron Bay and the North Coast, the quirky hamlets of Bruswick Heads, Federal, Clunes and Bexhill, Bluesfest, the hinterland rich with fields bursting with fresh produce, happy chooks, rainforests, waterfalls, creeks and rivers that slice the landscape into unexpected shapes. We’re not far from Nimbin – the birthplace of Australia’s Aquarius movement back in the day – and a number of wee hamlets that are home to folk who perhaps lost track of what year it is quite a few ago.

If it’s wet you might find a green tree frog outside my front door or, in the dry, a snake under my lawnmower. But whatever the weather (and we do get some), just beyond the frogs and baking snakes you’ll find Bangalow: Definitely not your average country town.

 by Ben of

Disarm Doors and Crosscheck