Last night we had a plan, this morning that changed! The Pacific Highway has been closed for some days for a fire near Taree, but a diversion was in place via Taree and Wingham. We planned originally to take this. Then, yesterday afternoon they closed the highway further north as the fire seemed to have spread. So, we headed to the airport and booked a flight down to...
I am actually a Phascolarctos cinereus. This name is is derived from the Greek words phaskolos “pouch” and arktos “bear”. The specific name, cinereus, is Latin for “ash coloured”. However, the early settlers actually called me a Koala Bear, despite the fact that I am a marsupial …. Koala, not a bear ….. This morning we...
A change in wind direction overnight made things much more comfortable in Port Macquarie today, but no easier for the firefighters struggling to contain the bush fires all around. We can still see smoke billowing around, but the south easterly breeze is carrying it away from Port Macquarie. So, we weren’t going anywhere today and had a quiet day around the town...
A varied day today. We had all day to head down to Port Macquarie, so we decided to take our time and head down the coast. We started at South West Rocks – a small town on the Macleay River. We had a look round the small, but interesting maritime museum, where one of the more bizarre exhibits (given where we are) was a British Seagull outboard. British Seagull...
It’s hot …. So, the best bet in the heat seemed to be to head for the hinterland. About an hour’s drive inland from Coff’s Harbour is Dorrigo. The Dorrigo national park is an area of remnant transitional rainforest and so was much cooler than staying on the coast. By the rainforest centre was a ‘skywalk’ – a boardwalk out...
Normal service was resumed today. Light winds, sunshine and temperatures around 25 degrees C. So, we decided to head just north of Coffs Harbour to do a walk from Emerald Beach to Moonee Creek. We saw Emerald Beach a couple of days ago, but we headed further on this time to Look At Me Now headland. Yes, it really is called that …. It might seem a more...
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...