Crystal Castle & Shambhala Gardens

Crystal Castle sits in the Byron Bay hinterland at Montecollum, about half an hour inland from Byron, and is built around subtropical botanic gardens you walk at your own pace. The headline pieces are genuinely large: the Crystal Guardians are amethyst geodes standing five and a half metres, among the tallest in the world, and the Buddha Walk leads through the gardens to a four-metre Blessing Buddha. The Crystal Labyrinth runs half a kilometre and is laid out on the sacred geometry of the Chartres labyrinth, with more than ten thousand rose quartz crystals set into the path. Daily sessions are included with entry: a thirty-minute guided garden walk at 11am from the Fountain of Peace, and crystal sound healing in the geodesic Peace Dome at midday and 3pm. A crystal meditation runs in the early afternoon. It works as a wet-weather day too — most sessions are indoors and the gardens hand out umbrellas. A day ticket includes returns for the following twelve months, which is worth knowing if you are staying in the region for a while.