The Ultimate Brisbane to Byron Bay Road Trip - Britz

Seven nights and 487 kilometres in a loop from Brisbane in a campervan, down the Gold Coast into northern New South Wales and back, which is the shortest distance over the most days of anything in the range.

The Gold Coast comes first, then Tallebudgera Creek, a tidal creek mouth calm enough for small children that sits a few minutes from the surf, and Springbrook National Park up behind the beaches, where the waterfalls drop off the rim of an eroded volcanic caldera and the Natural Bridge has a cave with glow worms in it.

Hastings Point follows across the border, then Byron Bay, the most easterly point of the Australian mainland, with the lighthouse on the headland and whales passing offshore in winter, and Lennox Head on the way back north, which has a long right-hand point break and a lake behind the beach.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Eight days for under five hundred kilometres means the camper barely moves, which is the whole appeal: the stops are beaches and the driving is incidental. This is the most family-friendly itinerary Britz publish on the east coast. Byron in particular needs campsites booked well ahead, since demand there exceeds supply for most of the year. Springbrook is the stop people are surprised by: twenty minutes inland from the beaches and several degrees cooler, with rainforest, waterfalls and a view back down to the coast.