Long Weekend

October 6th was Labour Day*, so we went to Coffs Harbour for the Long Weekend.  We left Saturday morning, stopping in Bellingen on our way to explore the downtown shops and gelato opportunities as well as the Old Butter Factory (which I had thought, having driven by three times before, was some sort of historical museum, but turns out it's just more shops with no information on what the old butter factory was or might have been).  We were thinking about having lunch in Bellingen, but the cafes don't switch from their morning breakfast menus to lunch until around eleven thirty, and we didn't want to stick around that long.

(*While the official holiday is Labour Day, we did not hear anyone actually call it that, and it was only referred to either as the Public Holiday or the Long Weekend.)

Arrived in Coffs around lunchtime: after a bite to eat and checking into the hostel, we thought we'd try the beach but it was incredibly windy (gusts up to 40mph) so we went to the Botanic Garden instead.

Mangrove boardwalk by the river

Eucalyptus forest walk

Rainforest walk

Big amaryllis flowers... not in a pot like we're used to.

Orchid tree (Bauhinia variegata)

Echium candicans (Pride of Madeira)

Himalayan pink cedar leaves (Acrocarpus fraxinifolius)

Himalayan pink cedar tree (Acrocarpus fraxinifolius)

Erithrina falcata blossoms

Millettia sutherlandii

Saw a lot of these trees around, not just in the botanic garden but
along the road from around the Bellinger river to lining the streets
in Coffs.  Smelled really good... couldn't figure out what they were.

Phascolarctos cinereus

Rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus)

We brought our bicycles with us and biked out to the jetty before dinner, which turned out to be at our new favorite restaurant in Coffs (really delicious Ethiopian food.)

Looking south from the jetty

Looking northeast, toward Muttonbird Island

Sunday was a busy day for us!  We started the day off with paddleboarding up the estuary (saw some more estuary stingrays as well as white spotted eagle rays, lots of fish jumping and a menagerie of birds), took boogie boards to the beach and played in the waves (the water was a balmy 19 C but we wore wetsuits and didn't feel cold), went to the Fisherman's Co-op fish market and picked up some barramundi to supplement our lunch, and then finished the day by climbing up Muttonbird Island and down again.  On the far eastern side, out to sea, we saw a humpback whale breaching as well as slapping its fins against the water.  It was an incredible sight.  (Unfortuntately, we didn't get a picture of it breaching.  Just the fins sticking up in the air.)

Sacred kingfisher (as recalled from paddleboarding)

Spotted eagle ray (as recalled from paddleboarding)

It was so windy the waves were crashing over the breakwall!
It was like a game.  You had to run to avoid getting wet.

Looking down toward Coffs Harbour from the top of Muttonbird Island

Looking out to sea from the top of Muttonbird Island

 

 

 

 

Looking south toward Boambee Beach

West again toward Coffs Harbour

Monday morning took us to the Bruxner Flora Reserve and the Sealy Lookout.  We did a short bushwalk before heading back, picking up some avocados and bananas at the side of the road along the way.  (The best part about the Bruxner Flora Reserve, in my opinion, was the drive to and from, really beautiful albeit rather brief.  Just a windy road up the side of the hill between trees and banana fields.)  And then on the road back inland.  We ate our lunch in Bellingen (at last) before driving to Dorrigo National Park.

Coffs Harbour from Sealy Lookout

Bruxner Flora Reserve

Bananas in the valley

Bananas on the right

 

 

More bananas

 

Dorrigo National Park was absolutely amazing and beautiful.  I think it might be one of my favorite places in Australia so far.  It's well known for the skywalk, a platform which extends out above the trees, but it was the trails through the forest that I found to be the most memorable.  Truly superior forest bathing, if you're into that (which I am.)  The birds were amazing, most of which we did not see, but we really enjoyed hearing them.  We also saw a couple new kinds of birds, including the Superb lyrebird and the Australian king parrot, which we could identify.  (Most of the other ones we saw flitting around we could not.)

Looking towards the end of the skywalk

Just to the left of Reid (just under the left cloud), Dome Mountain

McGrath's Hump

Really big vine.

The Superb lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) wanders across the trail

We only did a short hike here, but it's relatively close along Waterfall Way so we're planning on coming back again sometime soon.  This weekend, if the weather's nice, we're thinking about going to Cathedral Rock National Park, even closer still.  But it's forecast to rain ... so we'll see what happens.