The coast and the wine valley

We have had a fun week of camping and seeing a million new sights.  Everything is so new and interesting, it becomes somewhat overwhelming after a long day out and about.  I had a dentist appointment on Monday to fix the filling that broke off on Friday – and paid more than double what I would pay at home for the repair, although it is a “bang-up” job.  (I’m learning Aussie :)).  We left that afternoon to drive down to the coast.  Of course what with packing the car and getting all the last minute things together we didn’t get away until about 5 pm.  Plus we had to identify this snake we found outside the house.  Geoff bought a book of Australian snakes and we found out it is a small Marsh snake.

 

We travelled through Uralla and Walcha (where we saw this great sign – Dahn you’ll agree that I should bring one home…)

then down the Oxley Highway.  We decided to stop for the night in Wauchope, about twenty kms from Port MacQuarie as it was getting dark and drizzling.  The woman at the hotel we stopped at couldn’t believe we wanted to stop there rather than drive twenty more minutes to our destination, but we managed to convince her to rent us a couple of rooms.  We had dinner at the only open restaurant in town, Chinese food, which was excellent.  After a wonderful night’s sleep we headed off to Port MacQuarie in the morning and stayed at the Flynn’s Beach Caravan Park (for the uninitiated this is a camping area where there are some people who live long-term in motor-homes, they have small motor-home cottages for rent, or you can camp with or without power).  Here are the members of our greeting party… this lizard who is unidentified…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And these Australian Brush Turkeys…

After a walk on the beach and a swim (well really just a romp in the waves), we had lunch and fun watching the surfers and the birds…

Little Corellas (I think), a cockatoo

A Masked Lapwing (notice the wattle)

A Galah, another cockatoo.  The word galah is used to mean stupidity, but the birds are certainly pretty.

  In the afternoon we visited the Koala hospital.  We haven’t seen any of these animals in the wild, even though there are often signs indicating that they are about.  But they are nocturnal, and sleep in the trees during the day.  There is a terrible saga of these animals being killed for their fur, and losing their habitat through the removal of gum trees for pastureland.  They move very slowly and are rather cute.

This is all for now as I am off to a craft fair.  But I’ll be back to tell you more about the trip later…

Janet