Sadly it was time to move on again today and it was a big day. After heading past the Big Prawn in Ballina we moved on to the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour. ‘Big‘ things have become something of a cult attraction in Australia. We saw just two today and have missed the ‘big ant’ (in Broken Hill), the ‘big avocado’ (in Duranbah), the ‘big beer can’ (in Cobar) and sadly we have completely missed the ‘big chook’ (in Mount Vernon). Still two big things were enough excitement for a day.
Had we gone further west we might have come to Duneedo. The name derives from the Aboriginal word for ‘swan’ but to Australians, it is much more memorable as ‘dunny’ (the colloquial word for toilet …). The local council had proposed to build “The Big Dunny” to attract tourists. It was going to be a three-storey high building with five-star toilets, a visitor centre, viewing platform, and even a radio station. However, feasibility consultants (who knew there was such a job …) concluded that it would probably only attract about 30 visitors a day so proposed instead an environmentally friendly self-composting toilet block. The council decided against the latter and in the end nothing was built. Sad that both proposals went down the pan …..
Having had our fill of ‘big’ things, we went via Thursday plantation to see the tea-tree plantation and then on to Emerald Beach. This is a lovely beach just north of Coffs Harbour and we went for a walk up to the headland. Up there as well as a kangaroo idly munching (and ignoring us!) was a memorial to the Dammerel family. They apparently operated the early lighthouse and signal station on the mainland and the offshore Solitary Islands. The lighthouse is on South Solitary Island and has been there since 1880. Maud Dammerel was the daughter of the signal station operator – George Dammerel. She conducted a courtship with Harry Fisher, but the courtship was done by semaphore and morse code as he was the lighthouse keeper on South Solitary Island. He apparently even made his own lamp and it is said that their morse conversations went on for some time – hardly surprising really! They eventually married though history doesn’t record whether their conversations continued in morse (probably not …) and when the signal station closed George Dammerel went to live with them in another lighthouse …..
We arrived at our apartment in Coffs Harbour later afternoon and caught up on shopping and other essentials …..