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.