Lennox Point is the reason surfers know this village. The right-hander that wraps the headland is long, powerful, and demanding, a wave that rewards the patience of sitting in the lineup with a ride that just keeps going. In February 2007 the coastline here was declared a National Surfing Reserve, the third such reserve in Australia, recognising the break's significance to the sport. It is also the largest of them, running roughly seven kilometres of coast from the surf club south to Flat Rock. Above the break, a cliff some sixty-five metres high launches hang-gliders when the wind is right, and from the Pat Morton lookout at the point the view runs north along Seven Mile Beach toward Broken Head and Byron, with whales passing offshore in season and dolphins riding the swell below.

On the northern edge of the village sits Lake Ainsworth, and the first thing you notice is its colour. The water is stained a deep tannin brown, the result of oils and tannins leaching from the tea trees that ring the shore. It looks unsettling and is in fact prized, the tea-tree water long held to be good for the skin, the lake itself a calm, shallow place for swimming, paddling, and learning to windsurf away from the surf. Surf skis, catamarans, and sailboards can be hired from the eastern shore, and the protected water makes it a forgiving classroom for beginners. After the raw power of the point, the lake is the village's gentle counterweight, a place to float rather than fight the sea.

Lennox Head sits on Bundjalung country, and one of the clearest signs of that long custodianship stands among the houses on the western edge of town. The Lennox Head Bora Ring is a raised ring of sand, only twenty or thirty centimetres high, easy to miss, set on cleared land near Gibbon Street and now surrounded by suburban homes. It was a ceremonial ground, a place where initiation ceremonies were performed, and it remains significant to the Bundjalung people. Visitors are welcome to look but are asked not to walk into the ring. It is a quiet reminder that the village, for all its surf-town newness, is laid over country whose meaning runs far deeper than a single good wave.

Behind Lake Ainsworth, the Lennox Head heath spreads out, a specialised band of coastal vegetation that comes into its own in spring, when a carpet of wildflowers pulls in birds by the dozen. Brahminy and whistling kites work the air, fairy-wrens flit through the low scrub, honeyeaters and grassbirds call from the heath. Down on the reef off Seven Mile Beach, a spot known as the Moat sits within the Cape Byron Marine Park, good for snorkelling among tropical fish and shellfish. The village itself keeps a relaxed pace, all sidewalk cafes and casual restaurants, a place sea-changers and holidaymakers come to slow down. With around 7,700 residents, it is small enough to feel like a village and lucky enough to sit on one of the finest stretches of coast in the country.