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Published: August 5th 2007
We left sydney a day earlier than we had originally planned, and so we decided on our way to Port Macquarie that we would have a small stop in Newcastle. This was a very nice little place, but totally bizarre and very different from the real Newcastle! There was not much to do there, so we decided to continue our hunt for wildlife and hoped to see some animals there as it was not as built up as some of our previous destinations, and i guess we got our wish of sorts. Strange thinng about newcastle was everything was dead! We went to the beach and saw a few ded fish on the shore. I think there had been some kind of oil spill there recently, as the woman from the hostel mentioned that there had been a beached oil tanker (that was our first clue!) and the sand was covered in a fine black layer. We decided this is probably what killed the fish! Later on, we randomly came across a huge yet totally dead bat which looked more like a guinea pig with wings! We hovered around for a while as we did not want the locals to see us standing there taking pictures of a dead bat, but we did and will put it on as soon as!
We were only in Newcastle for one night before we went onto Port Macquarie. We were met off the bus by the manager of our hostel whi took us on a lilttle driving tour of Port Macquarie which is an absolutely lovely place and one of the highlights of Australia so far! The managers enthusiasm rubbed off on us and so we decided pretty much straight away that we wanted to stay an extra night there!
One of the things the manager was really enthusiastic about was all the wildlife - he told us how prolific the dolphins were, and that you could see koalas in the trees 2 out of every three days, especially if you went to Kooloonbung Creek. Needless to say in our four days in Port we did not see any wild koalas, but like enthusiastic school children we headed straight for the Creek!It was nice enough to walk around there, but no signs of life of any sort really, and having not yet learned our lesson from our Blue Mountains odyssey, we ended up racing the sun out of there!
The next day we went to Billabong Koala Breeding Centre, and we got to hand feed the kangaroos and wallabies which was amazing! They are really soft and really cute, especially when they put there front paws on your hands whilst they are licking what ever it is that you are feeding them off your palms! We also saw one little joey poke his head out of his mums pouch, which happened far too quickly to get a photo but was one of the cutest things i have ever seen! It was quite a small park, so it didnt take long for us to wander round and see the other wildlife. They had quite a few adorable koalas, and we got to pat one of them, but that was a very rushed experience as we had to run to get the bus back to Port Macquarie.
It was this evening which we had our first experience of BATTOMANIA. At around 6ish every evening the sky would fill with thousands of giant flying bats. These were enourmous and would really have to be seen to be believed! They all seemed to flow from the cemetary (which of course came as no suprise).
Next day was Harry Potter day! Had to put off buying it until the afternoon though, as we had decided to go for a bike ride in the morning (still cant believe that we did it, neither of us have ridden a bike for years!) We cycled to a place where we could get a ferry across the river, and then cycled down the breakwall which runs parallel to the main beach but across the river. This was a very very bumpy ride, and we were glad to get back on tarmac to cycle to the other ferry point. We were promised wild kangaroos on this journey, but once again they did not show, though it was v nice to get fresh air and exercise! When we got back i bought Harry POtter and buried my head in it until later than afternoon when we went on a sunset cruise. It came free when we booked our whale watching tickets, and it was not something either of us would normally have done! It was fantastically boring and we were stuck on the river so it wasn't as if either of us could escape as we sailed past all the sights we had seen on our bike ride that morning! Dont want to be too negative though ( we really did enjoy port macquarie!) We saw some wild dolphins on our cruise, albeit from a distance, and the sunset was very pretty. We wouldnt have somplained if they cut the fish feeding ( or seagull feeding as it became) from the trip though!
On our final day in Port Macquarie we went on a whale watching cruise. We went really quickly on our little boat over some massive waves - it was like a roller coaster and was quite sickening, but we were both determined not to be ill if the obviously hung over guy could handle it (though he could barely handle it!) We got to see a group of 3/4 whales, and they didnt do anything exciting really. One came up quite close to the boat, but saw it was full of whale watchers and quickly retreated. He was absolutely massive though! Most of the time it was just their fins and them spouting that we saw. Despite the driver continually saying "they must be playing underneath the boat" it was blatently obvious to everyone who had payed to see them, that the whales were closer to the horizon than to us! Still we paid to go to see wild animals, and so we cant expect them to perform on que.
We also went to the Koala Hospital, which was very small but worth a visit just because watching the koalas drink the milk was really cute! We also saw our first wild kookaburra there (the birds paul had been trying to photograph in melbourne turned out not to be kookaburras after all). They were another mystic bird! Plonker!
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Dad
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Australian Wildlife
Do Koalas fell like a brillo pad and do they smell of eucalyptus? Which Austrailian wildlife do you feel most sorry for? Wombats look pretty gormless fat and slow and haven't had much of a mention so far! Love Dad