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Published: June 21st 2013
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We left Port Stephens fairly early on the Tuesday morning, knowing that we had a drive of about four and a half hours to do today to get to Coffs Harbour. Once packed up and checked out, we set off up the Pacific Highway, and stopped off at Port Macquarie midway through the journey. Our original plan was to stay here, however we had to shave off a few days when we extended our stay at work by a week to save a bit more money. Once parked up, we had a walk around the harbour and some of the shops to give our legs a stretch. It was once again a beautiful day, and the area looked stunning in the morning sunshine. We found a little pub that had some really good lunch specials so both enjoyed a lovely steak for only $7 – probably the cheapest meal that we’ve had over here and it was delicious!
We continued our journey up the coast and eventually reached Coffs Harbour by about 2:30pm, and found the Beach Park Holiday Apartments, located right opposite the beach just over the road. We had booked a motel room as this was the cheapest
option, however the lady checking us in informed us that she had upgraded us to a one bedroom apartment as it was fairly quiet, and she liked to do what she could for her guests. What a lovely lady! We were handed our key and directed to our apartment, and couldn’t keep the grins off our faces as we explored our huge apartment. It was bigger than each of the apartments that we had in Sydney – the fact that the bedroom was completely separate from the living room was one of the key differences! It was a shame that we were only here for 2 nights!
Once we had brought everything in from the car we had a little walk over to the beach opposite while it was still light and sat on some rocks for a while watching a guy fishing on some rocks a bit further out (and wondering how the hell he was going to get back in as the tide had already come in past the rocks he was standing on?!). We then had a drive around to the harbour and stopped off at a nearby Coles on the way back to pick up
some food for the next couple of days before spending the evening watching TV on the very comfy sofa in the living room!
The next day was our only full day in Coffs Harbour, and our first stop was a little place called ‘Dolphin Marine Magic’ that Craig had found out about a few months ago when researching things to do in the area. There was no keeping us away from a place that apparently offered free dolphin and sea lion kisses! The place was really cute – pretty small but very interactive, and we were allowed to pat and play ball with the dolphins in the main pool before the main show that they put on twice a day. We also got the chance to receive a kiss from a dolphin and then a kiss from a sea lion (which was rather ‘whiskery’!), which was cute! We then watched the main show, where the dolphins and sea lions performed various jumps, tricks and balances, and the trainers also explained and demonstrated some of the various techniques they use to monitor the health and wellbeing of these animals, all of which were either rescued or were born at the
park. We both got to take part in the show – Emma had to hold out a fish on a stick for a dolphin to jump up and grab (took a video of this so no pictures I’m afraid!) and Craig got to play ball with a sea lion – throwing the ball to it so that it could butt it back to him.
After the show we went to feed some rays and sharks at one of the smaller pools, and then we also fed some Little Penguins (the smallest penguin species – hence the name!) some fish. Once we were done watching the dolphins play for a little longer, we left the park and made our way back to the car. We had heard of a place called ‘The Big Banana’ in Coffs Harbour which we had on our ‘must-see’ list, so we then made our way to this attraction, not really sure what was there beforehand! It turns out that it was a place dedicated to all things banana, and visitors were able to take a tour of the banana plantation and watch a short film in a theatre about, well, bananas! We decided to not
pay the extra to do this (Emma doesn’t even like bananas!), however we did see that there was a toboggan run there, which we could not miss! We paid $8 for the two of us to have a go on this, although I regrettably left the camera in a locker before I got on – really wish I had taken it on now looking back but never mind! We got a toboggan each and went up the lift hill before zooming down the track. It was really fun and as there was no one else on the track to slow us down we were able to keep the levers down and not bother with the brakes 😉
Before we left, we took an obligatory picture in front of the big banana at the front of the property and then drove into the main shopping area of Coffs Harbour. We spent a couple of hours walking around the shops and just generally having a look around, and then later returned to our apartment to pack up our stuff ready for our drive to Byron Bay in the morning!
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