Woodburn  New South Wales

A little village on the Pacific Highway straddling the Richmond River, about 9km north-west of Evans Head in the far north-east of NSW, Woodburn is a flat but pleasant place dominated by sugar cane farms.

It’s a junction town, too, with roads leading from Woodburn to Alstonville, Ballina, Casino, Coraki, Evans Head, Lismore, and many other northern NSW towns. At one time it was a busy staging post for the steamers which plied the river, and even had its own shipbuilding yard.

There's a great riverside park here - the perfect resting place for weary motorists – with its own sandy beach, courtesy of the local Apex Club.

At Woodburn, you can hire houseboats for forays on the river, which meanders north-east for a further 30km or so before emerging into the South Pacific Ocean at the pleasant, sub-tropical holiday town of Ballina.

From Woodburn, it's a relatively short drive to the fabulous surfing beach at Evans Head at the estuary of the Evans River. The Broadwater and Bundjalung National Parks are a short drive away and just up the road at a quaint place called New Italy there’s a museum commemorating a failed migration to the area in the 1880s. There’s also an Aboriginal gallery at New Italy.