It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, the weather is not perfect every day in paradise … Today was a case in point. While it could hardly be argued to be awful, the weather wasn’t great today with very strong winds and some rain and thunderstorms. So, we pottered around Coffs. We headed initially to the Park Beach Plaza to sort out some shopping...
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...
Actually, as we found out yesterday, Byron Bay was not named after Lord Byron the poet, but he would have fitted right in. As someone who liked a drink, he would have been able to sympathise with the surfing culture which is still deeply embedded in Byron Bay: “Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.” Lord George Byron We had a...
We started the day with a walk which didn’t quite turn out as planned. Maps without topographical information can be annoying and the walking map of O’Reilly’s is a case in point! Actually, given that we were aiming to walk down to the Blue Pool on Canungra Creek, I could easily have worked out that it is likely to be downhill all the way and whilst...
Birds apparently start early in the day ignoring the fact that Queenslanders don’t have daylight saving, so we had to start our day at 6.45am for a bird walk. This was billed by O’Reilly’s as an early morning bird walk, so the title fitted though it was us doing the walking, not the birds …. The guide started outside the main entrance with a...
Sadly we had to leave Flaxton this morning and move on. On our way we stopped for coffee and a croissant at the lovely local French restaurant. The proprietor is friends of Dene and David’s and we had a lovely reception. We headed straight off from there and back through Brisbane, across the Gateway Bridge and down towards Canungra. there we joined the...
Mooloolaba seafront was very neat. Even the ibises are very well trained and only cross the road at pedestrian crossings. The ibis was historically rare in urban areas, but since the 1970s has decided that it would like the better facilities and in particular the better food scraps offered in towns and cities. They are most commonly found in open public areas, often...
When we were here 28 years ago, Noosa was a relatively sleepy town. Lovely beaches and a beautiful national park, we would struggle to have called it up market. Now we would have to describe it as up something else! The town had changed beyond recognition. The place where we stayed on the modestly named Sunshine Beach had been knocked down and Sunshine Beach was now...
After a rain storm last night, the weather still couldn’t be described as a classic Queensland spring day – grey and cloudy – but it did keep the temperature down and made it quite a comfortable day. We started with a walk around the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve. This is an area of 530,000 square metres and was donated to the local council to...
The forecast wasn’t a classic this morning, but we should know never to trust forecasts. It dawned hot and sunny … So, we headed off to catch the Cityhopper again, only to find that we had just missed one. Given they are every half an hour, we figured we might as well walk ahead of it and allow it to catch us up at some point. It never did catch us up, so...