Coastal stories…
Some things change, some don’t
Lennox Head — the town is changing but a few things remain the same.
THEY’VE gone. Those old weatherboard houses along the street behind the beach. Gone. Gone these past couple decades.
They were not gone when I drove our Mitsubishi L300 van to town collect Fiona when she finished work for the day. That was around 20 years ago when she was working for the local planner and living in a multiple-occupancy community in the rainforest where the dusty dirt of Seven Mile Beach Road crests the headland just south of Broken Head.
Lennox Head, it was then a small coastal town where those weatherboard houses once stood and had done for… how long?… decades… going back to when Lennox was nothing but an occasional stop on the highway going north. Now the town centre has been partially rebuilt. The place is growing, spilling over the headland on its southern edge and onto the sandy land inland of the beach. Fortunately, the rebuilding along the commercial strip is human-scale with commercial and residential buildings not exceeding two or three stories. Sure, they lack the traditional Australian character of those weatherboard houses, but they are not architecturally obnoxious or pretentious as are others elsewhere.
Lennox does not have a great beach. Nor is it wide as it curves towards the high headland at its southern end. The headland deflects the glassy swells coming off the point and makes this a favourite surfing location. You see people standing atop the headland by their surfboard-laden cars, checking out the swells. Small? Big? Choppy? Offshore? Onshore?
It is not only those in the water riding nature’s swells of surging energy. Look up. In the right conditions, nature creates other swells of airflow curving over the headland and brings out the paragliders. On afternoons when the airflow is onshore, consistent and of the right strength the sky can be crowded. Soon, paraflyers will start complaining about crowded skies just as surfers complain about crowded surf spots.
It is true that you can get a good coffee in town to start the day. That came with the cafes that set up as the town was rebuilt and the population grew. You can also get a gelato from the little shop that finds no difficulty in attracting trade through the winter. There’s an art gallery that displays local works and offers art classes, the usual natural therapies practitioners, shops selling mysterious stuff in bottles and jars and a couple selling organic veges, fruit and other stuff.
Lennox Head Surf shop is still there on the corner, a good thirty years since I first walked through its doors back when those old weatherboard houses lined the main street. Then, it sold Town & Country surfboards and clothing. It still does. Some things don’t change even though the town around it has changed substantially. I’m happy with that.
Lake Ainsworth hems in Lennox at its northern extremity. It’s a big lake. Walk by at daybreak and out there on its still waters, reflecting the rosy pink of another fine day dawning on this coast, are the expanding ripples of one or two stand-up paddle boarders and open-kayakers.
Walk across the narrow road, past the women’s exercise class outside the surf club and onto the beach. There are only a couple surf-fishers and a few runners and walkers silhouetted against the brightness of the sand at this time of day. Watch, now, as the big yellow sun extracts itself from the clinging waters of the Pacific to rise into a pale blue sky.
Not bad, Lennox, and thankfully lower-key than its big commercialised, touristy brother twenty minutes up the coast, Byron Bay. Let’s hope it is Byron that continues to suck in the tourists and the backpacker travelers from other countries. Let’s hope they take the Lennox Head bypass and speed north.
Stories of the coast…
Encounters…
Places we would rather be…
Book review…
