BELLINGEN, NSW
With its lush, green LANDSCAPE folding into a QUIRKY, historic townscape, there’s a certain MAGIC to this HINTERLAND hub that speaks to Imogen Eveson.
FOR ME, BELLINGEN MIGHT just be the perfect town. Perhaps that’s because I grew up in Glastonbury, New Age capital of England, so I feel right at home with Bello’s bohemian vibes. On the Traditional Lands of the Gumbaynggir people, it lies on the wide and beautiful Bellinger River in verdant hinterland halfway between Sydney and Brisbane (and 30 minutes’ drive south-west of Coffs Harbour). The town prospered as a dairy farming community in the early 20th century – the rich soils of the surrounding valley plus ample sunshine and rainfall ensuring good pastureland – before an influx of people seeking an alternative lifestyle in the 1970s and ’80s weaved in DNA that changed its trajectory. This hippie history is documented in a film, Bellingen – The Promised Land, that I watch one evening at the Art Deco Memorial Hall, and is evident today in eclectic shops like the Hemp Store and community-minded spaces like cafe, restaurant and live music venue 5 Church Street.
Bellingen is a place that will defy anyone not to contemplate a tree change when they visit, and this has been happening in earnest for the past couple of decades. Hippie has turned hipster and visitors today also have a range of boutique shops to browse and smart eateries to frequent. Housed in a beautifully restored old timber church, Cedar Bar & Kitchen is the go-to spot for wine and nibbles or a refined share-plate meal on Fridays and Saturdays; sample craft beers and pizza in a converted factory at artisan brewery and boutique bar Bellingen Brewing Co., and head to Tish Faco Cantina at happy hour for $6.50 tacos, schooners and frozen margaritas. I spend a disproportionate amount of time sheltering from summer rain in Hyde Bellingen, drinking soy flat whites at its cafe and cultivating an interest in expensive flax linen sleepwear at its boutique. But despite these trimmings, you can’t beat a classic country pub complete with generously proportioned bistro meals: in this, the 1901 Federal Hotel more than delivers.
The pull of Bellingen, of course, extends way beyond the heritage streetscape and busy roster of markets and festivals. It’s the landscape that inspires the creativity that drives the town and provides outdoor adventures aplenty: seek out swimming holes, kayak and canoe the river, follow Waterfall Way to the heritage-listed Dorrigo National Park. There’s an unknowable magic stitched into that confluence of rolling green and winding water. One that keeps pulling me, and many others, back.