I’m often asked about Yamba, one of our favourite holiday spots over the last 20 years. With a great range of beaches, walks, tennis courts, skate parks and accommodation etc it’s been great for the kids growing up, and they still love it. Plus, it’s now only 90 minutes’ drive from Mullumbimby.
Byron residents will feel at home discussing skyrocketing real estate prices with the locals. One said, ‘My mate has a nice place near the beach, and not a week goes by without someone ringing up offering to buy it. In the last year or so they were saying $2–3 million, but it’s up around $7–8 million now’. The town even has a new masthead, which ‘looks like’ a newspaper, sadly it’s nothing but real estate news. Enough said.
Favourite restaurants are:
1. Dinner. Barbaresco in Angourie: great range of cocktails and wines, many Italian, good service and relaxed indoor/outdoor setting. Standout dishes include the roulade, or the beef carpaccio entrees, the risotto (also available in vegetarian), they also have great specials, but even the pizzas, truffle fries and kids’ pasta tasted great. Basically everything’s good.
2. Breakfast and Lunch. Beachwood Cafe in Yamba: Turkish food and some light rose in the sun on the footpath? Every time we visit we’re amazed at how enjoyable it is. Pretty much everything on the menu is great, I particularly love the broad bean dish.
There are endless other options, of which ‘Yum Yum Angourie Cafe and General Store comes to town’, despite its cringe-worthy name, was really good. Try the sweet potato gnocchi with shadows of blue cheese. If you really want to cross to ‘the other side’, try the Iluka Hotel. It’s easy to hire a boat from the Yamba marina and drive yourself, if you don’t want to take the ferry.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
