Coffs Harbour


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Oceania » Australia » New South Wales » Coffs Harbour
April 29th 2012
Published: May 2nd 2012
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Unbelievably we made it out of Bellingen! The morning we left was quite funny because somehow I managed to stall us so that we didn’t get out of town until lunchtime. I seriously did not want to leave (how hard can it be to persuade a boy that this is the place we’re meant to be and it’s ok to abandon our travels?!). So I had an extreeemely slow breakfast… took foreeever doing the washing up… remembered I needed to go to the shops… and post a letter… and go to the cash machine… then fell in love with a couple of houses before realising they were both for sale (a sign or what!)… and then took us on a drawn-out drive around the outskirts of Bellingen… and 9km of gravel road to see the farms… and then finally, much to Dean’s relief, we found ourselves back on the Pacific Highway. Ah well, I suppose we can always come back at the end of the trip:-)



Ever imagining what it would be like to live in Bellingen, I wanted to know exactly how far away the coast is, so we took a little detour to the coastal village of Mylestom. I’m pleased to say it’s a 25 minute drive from Bellingen and there’s a nice, long and clean beach. It’s not exactly calm and probably better suited to surfing than to swimming.



When we moved to Australia at the beginning of 2009, Dean wanted to be near the water and I wanted to be near a dropzone. Somehow we ended up 10 minutes from the beach and 2 hours from the DZ. I can’t complain as St Kilda is sensational, but Bellingen is 25 minutes from the beach and 35 minutes from Coffs City Skydivers. Have I won anyone over yet? :-)



That afternoon we made it to the ‘banana coast’ town of Coffs Harbour. There certainly are a lot of banana palms and the ‘Big Banana’ is a reminder that banana growing is still big business here, although it has been overtaken by tourism. Coffs Harbour doesn’t have much soul but, as it’s the largest town between Newcastle and the Gold Coast, it’s a regional centre for this part of the coast.



Our first port of call was the marina and the superb Muttonbird Island Nature Reserve. As its name suggests, it is an island but it’s connected to the mainland by a breakwater. It was such a windy afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had been swept off the breakwater into the sea. In fact, the waves were crashing right over it in places! We could barely hear each other speak over the wind. From August to April, Muttonbird Island is inhabited by 12,000 or so pairs of muttonbirds/shearwaters with their babies making an appearance in December and January. Walking from one end of the island to the other, we could see a few burrows but the majority of the birds had already left for the season. We just saw a couple of young birds happily sitting in the middle of the walking path… presumably the warmest spot to be.



The next morning, we headed to the lovely Botanic Gardens. It is managed entirely by volunteers and they really do an amazing job. There are rainforest boardwalks, sections devoted to other countries (with native plants from South Africa, China, India, Japan and the Americas), glasshouses filled with cacti and other exotics and a sensory garden with fragrant roses and herbs. In places it’s so ‘natural’ that you could easily forget you’re in a botanic garden.



Much of the rest of our time in Coffs Harbour was spent camera browsing as I desperately need that replacement. There is so much choice is out there and I haven’t yet bought one, but I have decided that it’s going to be a nice little Lumix. Now I just need to find one in the right colour and at the right price :-)
We also finally got an osteopath to sort out Dean’s back and give me an adjustment too. We’re both feeling so much better! After our treatments, we went for a walk around the town centre when the rain set in (again! will it ever stop!) so we sheltered in the entrance of the Cavenbah Hall which is a community hall where craft markets, exercise classes and social events are held. That evening, it was seniors dance night. We got chatting with one of the ladies who promptly lent us her umbrella so that we could continue our walk. She didn’t know us from a bar of soap but obviously felt confident enough that we would return her brolly. The actual town of Coffs Harbour does absolutely nothing for me, but we had a few simple little encounters like that there and it was refreshing to connect with lovely people.



We did lots of swimming whilst in town as we pretty much camped outside the pool. Very nice to wake up, roll out of the van, have a swim and hot shower, then stroll back to the van for brekkie.



On our way out of town we popped into the very random and bizarre Clog Barn. It’s a miniature model town of various Dutch locations as well as an extremely tacky souvenir shop selling everything from clogs (no surprise there) to sombrero hats (slightly surprising). We weren’t going to miss that one and had a good rummage around. The models themselves are built onsite using fiberglass and each brick and tile is moulded using latex moulds, then trimmed by hand and glued on one by one. The larger models can consist of as many as 50,000 pieces. Learning this made them slightly more impressive… This attraction was developed by the Dutch owner of the adjacent caravan park, whose paddle pool has fountains made of big yellow clogs!



A little further down the road we saw a sign to the ‘Big Banana’ and it seemed a little rude to drive past. So we ended up on a long windy road lined with banana plantations. It was only when I overestimating our turning circle whilst doing a u-turn on an extremely steep hill that our van almost ended up in a ditch! But all was well in the end but we decided to abandon our banana detour. (Sadly) there will be plenty of opportunities to see ‘big things’ further north… They’re not exactly on our travel agenda but probably unavoidable!

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