After traversing two days of inland highway to the north, we broke through to the coast at the Shire of Byron. There we got to watch yet more rain. But we got some intermittent sunshine, too. Temperatures were in the high 70s. The Coral Sea waters were warm, so we went swimming as soon as we arrived, notwithstanding the dangerous storm surge.

Byron Shire is home to several competing elements: developers (kept at bay by a “green” city council), hordes of surfers and backpackers (and the businesses that serve them), and a community of new agers. In fact, Byron may be the New Age capitol of the world. For starters, hundreds of health practitioners provide: energy healing, lymphatic drainage, sacred esoteric healing, crystal resonance healing, detoxification, aura-som, theta dna, chakra therapy, clairaudient channeling, angel/ascended master guidance, kinesiology, soul midwifery, and quantum bio-energetics healing. (I wonder what Werner Heisenberg would think about that last one.)

With all these healers, I was in the right place. My ears had become plugged up—I couldn’t hear very well. I needed some kind of therapy, but what kind? Iridology? Sacrocranial balancing? How does one choose from all the options?

A friend led me into a single story clinic decorated with mandalas and statues of Buddha. Soft, eastern music was playing somewhere. A secretary whose office chair consisted of an exercise ball admitted me. Shortly, a barefoot man wearing shorts appeared: Dr. Peter O’Brien—now going by the name Arpana Geeta. He quickly and professionally diagnosed my problem as a bacterial infection of the middle ear and told me apologetically that he was going to prescribe antibiotics. I think he was somewhat disappointed he couldn’t offer an effective herbal remedy instead.

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We’re staying in Suffolk Park, a small community just south of Byron Bay, to avoid crowds and traffic jams. The upcoming blues festival held in Byron Bay every Easter weekend is sure to fill the town to overflowing, so we seek obscurity.

Our end-of-the-road cottage is separated from the ocean by a row of vegetation-covered dunes. A short walk puts us on the beach, something we’re doing a couple of times a day.

The place has everything we need: bedroom, bath, a kitchen-dining-sitting area, a hammock, and a barbie. Our Vodafone chips don’t work here, but we get wifi if we sit out on the porch.

A friend arranged lunch at her home on the highlands near Cape Byron. Her veranda overlooks the entire sweep of the bay. Tropical birds fly overhead. Gentle, warm breezes blow in from the sea.

Miles of walks run through coastal vegetation, some of it rain forest. One day we walked south from our house to Broken Head.

Our objective was a secluded pocket beach, one that offers a sense of containment, unlike the open, kilometers-long, broad expanse of Suffolk Beach.

We never see truly gentle water here. Storms coming in off the Coral Sea keep wave action vigorous. We often feel the tug of rip currents.

To the west of Byron Bay lies hilly country that the locals call the hinterlands. Much of the hinterlands consists of farms and grazing land. Looking over them, we see Cape Byron rising in the distance.

A spit of land pokes into the ocean from Cape Byron. Stand on it and you are closer to America than at any other place in Australia.

Cape Byron has a lighthouse—the most powerful one in Australia. Light from an incandescent bulb, concentrated by two large rotating Fresnel lenses, casts brilliant beams out to sea (and over our cottage) three or four times a minute.

Today the light is automated. But a century ago, lighthouse keepers kept the beacon running. The red-roofed building to the right of the lighthouse used to be home to the men whose lonely job was to keep the warning signal operating.

Today, their quarters are available for rental by vacationers who want to experience the lighthouse keepers’ solitude.

Seems like a charming idea. But lines of tourists peer through the picket fences all day long, snapping pictures of tenants trying to enjoy their backyard barbecue.

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Byron Bay and vicinity must be the most alluring, benign, temperate, and beautiful place in the world. Laura and I began discussing immigration to Australia within hours of getting here. It’s bucolic and peaceful, full of breathtaking vistas. People who live here live in the outdoors. Their active lifestyle produces good conditioning (along, presumably, with alternative health practices). For culture, Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, is an hour’s drive up the coast. Sydney is just a hundred-dollar Virgin Blue flight to the south.

Potential immigrants face onerous restrictions. Basically you have to be rich or useful to come here. And even if you meet one or the other of those requirements, only 30,000 get chosen each year. So don’t sell your place in San MIguel or Indianapolis just yet.