2/13/2017 Gold Coast books: Exploring happy trails around Byron Bay Gold Coast Bulletin

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1 Mairead Cleary, author of Byron Trails. Lifestyle Gold Coast books: Exploring happy trails around Byron Bay John Affleck, Gold Coast Bulletin December 11, :00am Subscriber only DEVOTED trekker Mairead Cleary is committed to communing with nature and practises what she preaches when it comes to regularly hitting the tranquil trails around the Bryon and Tweed areas. Byron Trails Author: Mairead Cleary Publisher: Chrysalisious Books RRP: $30 1/6

2 IRISH engineer Mairead Cleary has several special places she goes to when she wants to escape the rat race. But instead of solely seeking the solitude of the bush to refresh and allow the stresses of everyday life to fall away, as might have been expected of the author of a book of 50 walks designed to take us all back to nature, Mairead s favourite go-to spot three or four mornings a week is the walk up to the Cape Byron lighthouse. Another is Shaws Bay at Ballina. And another is Cabarita, she said. They re all easy, coastal walks to blow the cobwebs away. And at the end of them all is a selection of cafes where people can indulge their other stress-busting passions involving coffee and cake. Byron Trails by Mairead Cleary General pictures of the Cape Byron Lighthouse at Byron Bay 2/6

3 Her guide to trails in the Byron and Tweed area includes a list of cafes handy to the walks she has selected at Byron Bay, Brunswick Heads, the Byron hinterland and Nightcap National Park, Mullumbimby, Lennox Head, East Ballina, the Tweed Coast and Tweed hinterland. Mairead arrived in Australia nine years ago, fresh from being involved in windfarming and eager to immerse herself in some postgraduate work in Melbourne and then to branch into solar power and other sustainability projects. Since then she has moved to Byron Bay and immersed herself in the local environment. Her love of trekking stems from her early backpacking days and her belief that spending time with nature relieves stress and depressive symptoms. Forest bathing, as the Japanese call it, can have a long-lasting influence on our immune system s ability to resist invasions from harmful bacteria, she writes in the book. When she spoke to the Gold Coast Bulletin about Byron Trails, she said people now were busier and more stressed than ever, which made it all the more important to explore the bush or simply soak up the serenity of a rainforest or a coastal view. I wanted Byron Trails to be really simple, easy to read, with maps easy to use and to be something that would catch the eye, she said. The result is a guide that is simple to use, provides a selection of trails ranging from suitable for kids to the challenging, and is a handy size to slip into a backpack. Gold Coasters will find several trails nearby, just over the border on the Tweed Coast. An interesting anomaly occurs though with Wollumbin (Mt Warning) in the Tweed hinterland. Mairead s suggested Wollumbin National Park walk does not follow the path up the mountain a 9km return trip with a steep scramble at the peak. Instead it starts about 3.5km shy of the mountain car park, following Mt Warning Road along Korrumbyn Creek and climbing steadily uphill as it approaches the trailhead for the actual mountain track. She said she decided to offer this as a scenic alternative because she believed the local Bundjalung people preferred bushwalkers not climb the mountain. Wollumbin and its summit were gazetted by the NSW Government as an Aboriginal Place in June 2014 in recognition of significance to traditional customs and practices. Destination NSW, a NSW Government department, advises that under Bundjalung law, only certain 3/6

4 people can climb Wollumbin so urges walkers to consider choosing to respect their heritage. The choice is yours, but Mairead said that despite her extensive walking uphill and down dale all over the region, she has never climbed to Mt Warning s summit. Miss Peregrine s Home For Peculiar Children Author: Ransom Riggs Publisher: Quirk Books/Penguin RRP: $19.99 THIS is a creepy story with creepy origins. Ranson Riggs book for young adults, about a teenage American boy who journeys with his dad to a small island off Wales after his grandfather s violent death, was first published by Quirk in The reprint, coinciding this year with the release of the Tim Burton film adaptation of the story, features a new cover depicting a movie poster version of Eva Green, who plays Miss Peregrine, and the cast of peculiar kids. It also includes a Q & A with Riggs, in which he explains where the idea came from for the book with its mysterious island, abandoned orphanage and a time loop in which Miss Peregrine and the children live. Miss Peregrine s Home For Peculiar Children. They are caught in their own groundhog day, forever living a 24-hour period during World War II that builds up to the moment a Nazi bomb is about the destroy their home and existence but never quite does, at least in their world. Peppered throughout the book is a series of weird, real-life snapshots, all given up long ago by their owners and salvaged by Riggs from flea markets. It started as a casual hobby but as he says, he noticed the strangest and most intriguing 4/6

5 photographs were always of children. So I thought: if I can t know their real stories, I ll make them up, Riggs says. The result is a fictional quest that reveals a tragedy as the boy at the centre of the story, 16- year- old Jacob, finds the ruins of Miss Peregrine s home for children and then, later, stumbles through a portal that plunges him back in time and into the loop. The children all have weird skills. One is invisible, a girl has fantastic strength, another is kept tethered so she doesn t float away Jacob becomes attached to Miss Peregrine and the peculiars one girl in particular and learns about his grandfather s origins and close links to the same group. But trouble is brewing. Another stranger journeys to the island, heralding the disintegration of an idyllic existence and the start of a different kind of war, reminiscent of other fantasy tales of weirdness and wizardry. Riggs has since completed a trilogy built around this story. It s a great read for teens and indeed most adults. Kill The Father Author: Sandrone Dazieri Publisher: Simon & Schuster RRP: $29.99 KILL The Father is Sandrone Dazieri s debut novel in English, following huge success as a crime writer with eight novels and more than 50 screenplays in his native Italian. The Father, in this instance, could well be the masked kidnapper who years before kept a child locked away in a silo. The child emerged from the ordeal with crippling claustrophobia and grew up to become a police detective. Now it seems the Father is back, teasing Dante Torre his former captive with a bizarre trail of clues after a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome and her six-year-old son goes missing. Police arrest the usual suspect the woman s husband and await a confession, but a senior officer doubts the case is so straightforward and calls in Dante and another detective because of their analytical skills. 5/6

6 Kill The Father. 6/6