Locals in the Tweed region already knew we were a bit special, obviously. The sheer beauty of the place routinely stops you in your tracks. It turns out we are also having a moment on the world stage. Along with the Red Centre in the Northern Territory, the Tweed is one of only two Australian destinations named in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2027, the travel publication’s annual list of 50 standout holiday spots and experiences, announced on Wednesday.
Now those who came here to escape the world may find it is coming to them.
“Bloody hell,” says a fellow resident Sarah Killington, whose verandah overlooks the wide, flat Tweed Valley. “We don’t want to turn into another Gold Coast.”
Jessica Lockhard, Lonely Planet’s destination editor for Oceania, says that the Tweed was chosen because: “What we’re really looking for is places that feel less crowded, that are offering a deeper and more meaningful experience, or are really inviting travellers to slow down.” We can definitely do slow.
Tweed Shire is Byron Shire adjacent, easily as beautiful but without the glamour. There are fewer “healers” and drum circles, less tourist overcrowding and recently arrived wealth. We are traditionally the poorer, daggier neighbour. And we like it that way. A place that people usually drive past on their way from the Gold Coast to Byron Bay. You can almost feel the atmosphere change when you enter Byron.
Flora grows madly in the volcanic soil and artisan producers abound, alongside generational cattle and cane farmers. There is, says Phillip Hepburn, co-owner of the restaurant Tweed River House, “an incredibly diverse agricultural and primary production sector”. Buying food from local producers becomes a mantra. Everyone goes to the Wednesday farmers’ market at the showground in Murwillumbah.
The town of Murwillumbah seems to have rebranded itself as an artist colony, dominated by M’Arts, a vast building in the centre of town, which functions as a performance space and where artists produce their work from studios. Once a service town for the agricultural industry, it has now evolved, says Troy Stanley, the owner of the M’Arts cafe and bar, into “a town where people are supportive of the arts and everything creative”.
Still, those who came here, like myself, because it was spectacular but cheap, now face skyrocketing rents and house prices. Since 2019, house prices have nearly doubled as city dwellers descended with their city money.
The Northern Rivers Rail Trail, which opened in 2023, filled the region with Lycra-clad bulging thigh muscles.
Scenery aside, for the people who live here it is all about community. Even if locals argue ferociously about One Nation and chemtrails on the community Facebook pages, this is a community that pulled each other through the floods of 2017 and 2022. “Watching the way this community does community … There’s nothing like it,” says Stanley.
And even with all the inevitable attention as a tourist destination, it is unlikely that the character of the place will wholly change.
“It is a very strong community with a genuine cultural and creative identity,” says Hepburn. Geoff Anstee, the chef-owner of the recently opened Sayu Japanese restaurant, puts it more succinctly: “They are beautiful working-class people, hard working, salt of the Earth.”
Just so you know.
