Good surf spots around Byron & up to Surfers
or night.
Plenty of nice little set-ups along there. The trick is finding good banks on the point or backbeach at each headland, so I would recommend cruising up from Brunswick heads (plenty of good spots to eat and hang out there. Brunswick is getting a little bit of a cafe culture these days. The pub there is awesome too for dinner and live music. Then from Brunswick just pull into each beach town (there's a connecting road running north along the coastline in between towns) try the backbeaches in North winds or morning offshores, try the points if there is a southerly wind. Each point & backbeach can be epic on their day but are all very rare to catch working, and even rarer to catch them all working at the same time, hence the recommendation to check in at them all.
The further north you go the more crowded it gets, then when you cross into QLD the crowds are intense (even more-so than the Pass at Byron) and the waves at the famous locations are perfect when they break.
I did my first road / surf trip up to northern nsw last year. Surfed a lot of empty beachies, got some surf at the more famous points also as expected with a bit of a crowd but was amazed at how it seemed next to every crowded point was a long stretch of very uncrowded beach breaks (something we never get in WA), as Yocal said above that Brunswick and little hamlets between there and qld had some very fun surf with min crowds, also south of Ballina , eye opening to see you can get good empty waves on the east coast as its almost an impossibility in the south west.
Mike, I'm amazed at the amount of uncrowded and sick sessions you can get here on the East Coast just for putting in a bit of effort.
I think it's because everyone lives on or near the coast and just stick to their local area and don't travel.
I'm from SA and had to drive 1hr20mins one way just to get to Victor, which hardly pumps and Yorkes was 3hrs away.
Hence I'm not fussed hitting the highway to search for waves, and nearly every weekend there's empty pumping setups with no one around.
Going up the coast surfing around august, & just want to know a few less crowded spots (if any). Also some other fun/touristy things to do during the day :)