Australia's latest rail trail reveals NSW's best-kept secrets

I'm part way through the brand new Northern Rivers Rail Trail, a 24-kilometre-long journey from the riverside town of Murwillumbah - 13 kilometres south of the Queensland border - to the tiny banana-farming village of Crabbes Creek, halfway to Byron Bay. The last train departed these parts on May 15, 2004, marking an end to exactly 110 years of rail transportation in the region. Since then, the railway lines have been decaying through the damp subtropical summers of the state's far north-east. In March 2023, the rail trail opened, marking the first stage of what's planned to be a 132-kilometre-long rail trail taking riders through the most scenic parts of northern NSW, through towns like Byron Bay, Bangalow and Mullumbimby.

It's worth noting: not everyone's happy about the trail. Perhaps you've seen the stories about tacks, nails and screws thrown across the trail by protesters hellbent on stopping riders. This renegade element wants the trains back. They're not alone; other less militant locals want their trains back, too. But it's been almost 20 years, and there's little hope of them returning. I grew up just south of here - the XPT train used to cut across our property, and one of its drivers would do a rendition of Farmer In The Dell on his horn as he'd pass by so I'm as nostalgic about NSW North Coast trains as anyone - but the economic viability of the railway waned and nothing has changed since. And the cost of making these rail lines ready for trains again (it cost enough just getting them ready for bikes) would make any government shudder.

At 24 kilometres long, the Northern Rivers Rail Trail can be "done" any way you want it. Ride it one way or just a portion of it and pre-book a shuttle back, or do it return in a day, or make a couple of days out of the experience and get to see the region properly.

I'm spending two nights in Murwillumbah, the beginning (or the end) of the trail. Murwillumbah - Mur'bah to locals - is a pretty country town by a wide blue-water river that if it didn't flood so badly every few years might be NSW's answer to Victoria's art and style hot-spot, Daylesford. Blessed with an original Art Deco streetscape and an emerging art scene, including one of regional Australia's largest art galleries, it's now also home to two of the state's best new restaurants, a hell of a way to carb-load for my ride.

I'm dining at one of them, Bistro Livi, in a stylish dining room with lighting soft enough for me to have to subtly scan the menu with my iPhone torch. Built within Murwillumbah's boho-hip M-Arts Precinct, Bistro Livi opened in January 2022 to rave reviews. Within a month, it was waist-deep in rain water.

Co-owners Nikky and Danni Wilson and Rob Mead say the opening of the rail trail is the ray of light for a community still reeling from two once-in-a-generation floods in six years. "Murwillumbah needed it," Mead says. "It's an absolute game changer." I'm staying in a room above the local pub, the Imperial Hotel (the Impy to locals). It's nearly 100 years old and upstairs the rooms are nicely refurbished, but Thursday night's cover band sifts through the new insulation. I join the town's late-night legends in time for a fitting 11pm encore of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Who'll Stop The Rain.

An oddly overwhelming blast of nostalgia hits me as I take off on the trail from Murwillumbah's 129-year-old railway station next morning. I'm renting an e-bike from Jeff Harris, who owns Murwillumbah Cycles. He had the foresight to secure a spot for a shop next to the tracks. Now he's working 16-hour days to meet demand. "People are coming from everywhere," he tells me. A long-time local, Harris says what he likes best about the rail trail is how the region looks nothing like it does from the M1 motorway that propels people through the region at 110kmh. "I've been here all my life and never had this perspective on the area," he says.

My first view out from the station is of sugar cane plantations and the Tweed's great volcano - Mt Warning. The tallest mountain in the Northern Rivers at 1159 metres high, it was called Wollumbin, or Cloud Catcher, by the local Bundjalung people. It's the centre-plug of the southern hemisphere's largest shield volcano, set around five World Heritage-listed national parks, home to the largest tract of subtropical forest left on Earth. There are columns of mountains beyond Wollumbin as far as my eye can see, part of the Border Ranges - you'd spend a lifetime getting lost amongst them. There's a stop close to town for the Tweed Regional Art Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre. But I keep pedalling past, coming upon honesty stalls selling $5 bags of passionfruit and pomegranates by the side of the trail as the landscape switches from cane to cattle pastures and forest. I pull up in the historic village of Stokers Siding. Bypassed by highways and forsaken by trains, I'd lived within 30 minutes of it for decades and never even driven through it once.

I find a main street of art galleries, bespoke furniture makers and historic homes with white picket fences beside beds of blooming flowers. "It's like having the [Sydney] Centennial Park trail through the Northern Rivers," furniture maker James Yonge tells me. "The North Coast has been a favourite place for people for so long but this is the first time you can ride right through it."

A kilometre south, I take a turn-off to Hosanna Farmstay, the only accommodation on the trail. A guitarist is strumming as I arrive, beside an open-plan coffee shop and barbecue shack built above green paddocks full of farm animals. Families swim in a dam, while others take farm tours.

Owners Kirsty and Regan Perry bought the business just before COVID-19 changed their world and everyone else's. Now, business is booming. "This is what the rail trail has been doing for us," she says. "We get people coming in saying 'wow, we never knew this place existed'. They wouldn't though, would they?"

Beyond the farmstay, the trail winds beneath cathedrals of wild, green rainforest where butterflies attack me from both sides, past historic bridges (there are 18 on the trail) and into a 500-metre-long pitch-black tunnel where glow worms glimmer. I emerge from the cold dark into a bright green world, the air thick with birdsong. It's about as peaceful a spot as I've seen in my native Northern Rivers, so I stand for a while, feeling filtered sunshine on my face.

Small gangs of riders pass by, some stopping to dissect the trail with me. Riding, it seems, is as much a social exercise as a physical one, especially on an e-bike (say what you want about e-bikes, but they open a whole new world of cycling to those of us who outrightly reject Lycra), though there are few hills on this trail anyway - the advantage of travelling along a train line. I ride into the tiny hamlet of Burringbar, every local's favourite secret of the Northern Rivers. There's a park where locals used to sit on blankets on Friday nights to hear live music and eat tacos from the best underground taco take-away this side of Brisbane. In June last year, a fire destroyed the eatery and the town's beloved cafe right next door.

Tiny communities like this one have a habit of turning into ghost towns with this kind of fortune. "Floods, fires, COVID, last year was the worst year of our lives," Bron Harrison - who owns the shop right next door (the Natural Wine Shop) - tells me. "I was away when the fire happened. I just cried. But there'll be other businesses now."

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I pedal onwards, in time for a light lunch at the Spotted Cow Bistro at the Victory Hotel in Mooball, and then to the end of the line at Crabbes Creek. I take a shuttle back along the old Pacific Highway which zig-zags its way through the mountains, comparing the view from this trail.

I arrive in time for a late three-course lunch served under rattan fans on the back deck of Murwillumbah's newest hatted (by the Australian Good Food Guide) restaurant, Tweed River House. The late afternoon sun shines down on Wollumbin and the hinterland ranges as I look across the Tweed River, the same body of water that swamped this place just after it opened.

"The water came to your feet," co-owner Gregory Lording says as I arrive inside the century-old restored river house. "But we only had five weeks out of action." They've just opened a new bar downstairs for tapas and cocktails on the lawn, and there are jazz dinners with an old-world ambience among the chandeliers from London, the Parisian wallpaper and the pressed-tin ceilings shipped out a century ago from New York.

The rail trail is scheduled to go well beyond Crabbes Creek and into the better known towns of the Northern Rivers, such as Byron Bay and Bangalow. A timeline for completion isn't known yet (though it's fiercely debated in bars); but for now the Tweed section of the Northern Rivers rail trail gives us the chance to delve deep into a region we know little about.

The writer travelled courtesy of The Tweed Tourism Co

The first rail trails originated in the United States in the 1960s as a way to make use of disused railway lines. The first rail trail in Australia was built from Lilydale to Warburton on the outskirts of Melbourne in 1996. Victoria led the way in the development of rail trails with Queensland following closely behind. NSW was the fourth state to join in. There are now almost 100 rail trails across Australia with more than 50 in the planning stages.

Getting there: All major domestic airlines fly to Coolangatta, then it's a 25-minute drive south to Murwillumbah.

Staying there: The Imperial Hotel in Murwillumbah's main street has rooms from $150 a night, see impy.com.au. Cabins and huts at Hosanna Farmstay start at $120 a night, or camp from $18 a night, see hosannafarmstay.com.au

Riding there: The Northern Rivers Rail Trail is free to ride. Hire a bike or e-bike from Murwillumbah Cycles, prices start from $25 for kids and $35 for adults (for four hours). Shuttle returns can also be pre-booked with them, see murwillumbahcycles.com.au.

Explore more: visitthetweed.com.au; northernriversrailtrail.com.au