Clarence Valley

This is one of the last places in NSW where the coastline still looks the way it always has, tens of kilometres running without a single development. Yamba sits at one end, regularly rated among the best towns in the country, its river mouth opening into the wide brown Clarence. Surf the reef break at Angourie, one of the nation's original protected surfing reserves, or head upstream to Grafton for its blooming jacarandas each spring. Wide river, empty beaches, and no one in a hurry to change that.