Qualla: Cape Byron

Cape Byron: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Lehmann, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand on this narrow finger of rock and there is nothing east of you but the Pacific, all the way to South America. Cape Byron is the easternmost point of the Australian mainland, the place where the continent runs out of land. It pushes into the ocean at 28.63 degrees S, 153.64 degrees E, about three kilometres beyond the town of Byron Bay, and on the morning side of a clear day it catches the sun before almost anywhere else in the country. The Arakwal people, custodians of this country within the Bundjalung nation, know the headland as Walgun, 'the shoulder', a name that reads true once you see the way the land hunches out into the sea.

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Image: Mike Lehmann | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cape Byron: Named for Foulweather Jack

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 15 May 1770, sailing up the east coast in the Endeavour, Captain James Cook passed this headland and gave it a name. He honoured not a poet but a sailor: Vice-Admiral John Byron, who had circumnavigated the globe in HMS Dolphin between 1764 and 1766. Byron's reputation at sea ...

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Image: Maksym Kozlenko | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cape Byron: The Walk Around the Edge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BigTo, CC BY 3.0. The best way to know the cape is to walk it. The Cape Byron walking track loops 3.7 kilometres through the Cape Byron State Conservation Area, and it can be joined at any point, with car parking at Captain Cook Lookout, Palm Valley, Wategos Beach, and the lighthouse. The track cl...

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Image: BigTo | CC BY 3.0

Cape Byron: Whales Off the Corner

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian W. Schaller, FAL. Because the cape juts so far out, the great whale migration passes unusually close. Humpbacks travelling between Antarctic feeding grounds and warm northern breeding waters round this corner in winter, and from the headland you can watch them blow, breach, and slap the surface of...

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Image: Brian W. Schaller | FAL

Cape Byron: One Corner of a Continent

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cape Byron belongs to an exclusive club: the four compass extremes of the Australian mainland, plus its highest point. To the north is Cape York, the northernmost tip; to the south, South Point on Wilsons Promontory; to the west, the aptly named Steep Point; and rising above them...

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Image: Maksym Kozlenko | CC BY-SA 4.0