Coffs Ocean Weekend

Last weekend and the preceding days were unseasonably hot in Armidale (34, 35 C), so Saturday morning we took off for the coast to beat the heat. The drive from Armidale, along Waterfall Way through Dorrigo and Bellingen to Coffs Harbour is always beautiful and it's been interesting to see what new flowers are in bloom for each visit.

We saw a couple of these completely red trees.
This one's hiding behind the others

A hazy cloudy day, driving over and down the winding
pass into the Bellinger River valley

The road through the Bellinger River valley was lined
with blooming jacarandas

Jacaranda in Bellingen's central park

View from the YHA room in Coffs

It was a beautiful weekend to be at the beach! When we arrived on Saturday we dropped off our stuff at the Coffs YHA hostel and went straight to the beach.  Boogie-boarding and swimming in the waves at Park Beach, walking down to the Fisherman's Co-op for lunch, sitting in the shade and bird-watching at the park, and then swimming in the calm waters at the Jetty Beach in the afternoon.  We went out to dinner at A Taste of North India (highly recommended, one of the top places at which we've eaten) and made our way back to the hostel.  This was our first time staying somewhere besides the Aussitel, and while the YHA is more expensive it did have the unexpected perk of a television in the room and dvd players rentable at the front desk.

Sunday it was a bit windier and better surf for boogie-boarding.  We stayed for lunch in Coffs as there was no real hurry to get back to Armidale, knowing it was going to be hot in town and hot in our house, so we left sometime after noon with a stop in Bellingen for gelato.  The clouds were already rolling in by mid-day, and we had heavy rain outside Dorrigo but it was after Ebor (roughly two-thirds of the way home) that we finally hit the real storm.  A torrential downpour and lightning .. we waited most of the storm out before driving home to a dry Armidale.  (Though it did rain later that evening, and the storm blew the hot weather away.  A few days later we were back to normal temperatures in the mid-twenties, with very cool lows between five and ten.)

Camel rides on the beach .. maybe next time.

The clouds were rolling in even as we left Coffs on Sunday

Clouds over the Bellinger River valley ..

The promise of more rain outside Ebor.

In ten minutes we would be in the thick of it.

Refreshments at Prue and Olive café

Just for fun, some pictures from lunch at Prue and Olive a couple weeks ago.  We ordered lemonade and ginger beer with our pastas, imagine our surprise when these fabulous beverages came to our table.

The glass is even sitting on a little polka-dotted liner...

Surprised and astounded.

Novelty-shaped ice cubes, mint, and frozen raspberries, but most surprising is the gummy worm tied to the straw.  (Except here I think they're snakes?  They did not have that classic American gummy-worm texture or taste, though admittedly it's been a while.  Anyway, they seemed closer to Swedish Fish.)

The pastas were fine, but it's was these that were the star of the lunch, and what was the most memorable.  The next time we go back, we'll definitely be looking forward to one of these high-caliber refreshments.

Happy Thanksgiving

Despite the huge number of Australian brush turkeys we've seen, this is the best photo I have of one.
How disappointing.

Australian One-Cent

I found an old one-cent coin in the backyard, which is kind of fun only because Australia doesn't use them anymore.  We brought it in and cleaned it up.

Feathertail Glider

Thus, we leaned a little bit about the history of one-cent and two-cent coins in Australia.  (Two-cent coins seem so British to me, somehow.)  These were minted starting in 1966 and discontinued in 1992 when both one-cent and two-cent were demonetized.  This one escaped being removed from circulation to be turned into a bronze medal for the 2000 Summer Olympics. 

(Note that this is not a penny; Australian pennies are actually worth quite a lot of money these days.  Unfortunately for us.)

Tamworth in July

This is four months late, but driving south to Tamworth along the New England Highway kind of felt like driving in Idaho in the summer.  Until you arrive in Tamworth, that is...

Anzac Park (Probably not too many of these in Idaho.)

July 5th in Armidale was the middle of winter, but it felt like spring in Tamworth.

I was really surprised to see rainbow lorikeets..

..and even more so to see prickly pear.

A beautiful sunny day

Hardly a cloud in the sky

Warm in the sun but cool in the shade.

Feeding the ducks in Bicentennial Park

Double-barred finch (at Marsupial Park)

It was noticeably milder and warmer than Armidale in Tamworth.  As the day turned into evening it cooled off and felt even more like summertime in the mountains. We climbed the hill to the lookout (the Berlingo did, at least), made a short visit to the botanical garden, and went to the Marsupial Park where we saw kangaroos, wallabies, emus and all sorts of other birds.  The only thing we missed out on was finding the enormous guitar ... Tamworth is the Country Music capital of Australia, so they have Something Big to commemorate that fact.  Oh well--saving something for next time.

The Lookout above Tamworth

Lookout along the New England Highway

The Black Sapote

Probably on par with custard apples and the feijoa, the black sapote (Diospyros nigra) was probably the strangest Australian-grown un-Australian fruit we've had a chance to try.  Related to the persimmon, it's native to Mexico and Central America and we had never seen one before.

It looked like a gigantic green tomato, so soft when it was ripe that
the flesh would indent where you touched it.

(Unfortunately it was pretty dark so none of our pictures are very good.)

It came from Coffs Harbour, which is where we get pretty much all of our interesting fruit.  When we bought it looked like an enormous green tomato, and the woman at the market told us it would be ripe when it was soft and had turned darker in color.  She also warned us it would not be pretty.  And indeed it was not.  We had to wait a few weeks (this was actually about a month ago so our house was still pretty cool all the time) but when it did ripen, it was dark and soft, and when we cut it open it was so... gooey inside.

It's also called the chocolate pudding fruit, but that's more for the appearance and texture rather than the actual taste.  Reid and I both agreed it seems like the color and texture was the only part of it that had any semblance to chocolate pudding, and it had no chocolate taste whatsoever.  As far as the flavor goes, we thought it sort of tasted somewhere between an avocado and a persimmon.  Sweeter than an avocado, and maybe a little more bland than a persimmon.

Disappointing milkshakes

A while ago, we went out for lunch on a Saturday afternoon, and because it was a nice day and finally feeling a bit summer-like, we ordered a milkshake to share for dessert, not thinking that it would be or could be anything other than the kind of milkshake we're familiar with.

Imagine our disappointment when instead we were served with a massive amount of cold frothed milk that tasted like strawberry Nesquik.  (It quite possibly was.)  Really... really disappointing.  Part of it was probably the cafe (I'm sure you can get a milkshake with better flavoring, excuse me, flavouring, at other venues) but most of it is just the fact that I am not a big fan of foamed milk.  Not cold, not hot, either (I don't really care for cappuccinos) and certainly not a pint and a half of it.

That style of milkshake is actually pretty popular here, and popular in the same way milkshakes are generally popular in the US (in that it's not just something for kids, the way I imagine a glass of flavored milk to be).  Upon googling it we found some links such as "the top 10 spots to get a milkshake in Brisbane" and references to people doing "milkshake crawls" in the city and the like.  For some reason it's very foreign to me... adults going out and drinking milk like this.

If you want an American-style milkshake, you must order a thick shake, which seems to be less common (or at least places that sell milkshakes do not necessarily sell thickshakes, but if you sell thickshakes, of course, milkshakes will definitely be on the menu.)  The ice cream culture seems to be just a little different down here, at least regionally.  There aren't Dairy Queens in Australia, or A&W (they don't drink root beer down here, not really).  The only chain we've seen is Cold Rock Ice Cream, which has a location in Coffs Harbour and we also saw one in Airlie Beach.  In the States, you can buy soft-serve ice cream (and/or milkshakes) at pretty much any fast-food chain, so I wonder if you can buy ice cream (and/or milkshakes) at Macca's or Hungry Jack's (McDonald's or Burger King.)  We haven't checked.  There's at least one place in Armidale where you can buy ice cream by the scoop, but it was pretty pricey so we'll probably just keep buying a tub at Woolies when we want a treat.

Maybe it's like this in the US as well, but I am always surprised by the amount of gelato in the selection at ice cream parlors.  We've gone to a couple places to get ice cream as a treat, first in Armidale for fun but also while on holiday, in Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, and Airlie Beach, and gelato definitely seems more prominent than in an equivalent store in the US.  I wonder if this is a part of Australian culture (the way frozen yogurt places are really popular in certain parts of America, maybe gelato is just more popular here), or if gelato has just become more popular recently globally, both in the US and Australia, or if I just notice it now because of my own personal experiences (maybe gelato is popular everywhere these days, maybe it always has been but I haven't been in the right place to notice.  I don't think I had gelato until I went to college.)

I really didn't think I had that much to say about ice cream/milkshakes .... apparently this is an important issue for me.
;)