Coffs Sunrise

A quick trip to Coffs Harbour this weekend. We stayed at a really nice AirBnB on a hill, overlooking the town and down to the ocean. The sunrise this morning was really beautiful; before I decided to grab the camera the sun was coming through clouds that were just above the harbour, very atmospheric It was to be a really hot day and even at 6:30am the sun was blazing!

New Years in Coffs

Frangipani flower outside our Airbnb stay.

We took a short trip to the coast over New Years, back to our usual haunts around Coffs Harbour. We had two cooler, cloudy days with passing showers, so we climbed Muttonbird Island and went to the botanical gardens, caught the new Star Wars movie and watched fireworks on the beach on New Years Eve. We finally got our beach holiday as New Years Day was bright, sunny, and beautiful, the most perfect day for swimming.

I have been meaning to post these photos for the past two weeks but have been lacking a bit in motivation. It didn't help that we had an electrical storm pass through a week and a half ago which put my mobile service tower out of service. I had no phone service for a week in Uralla, and even now I don't have internet at home. :/ It is a little inconvenient, but I have regular service when I drive to work in Armidale so it hasn't been too much trouble.

Cloudy day on Muttonbird Island

Where you would find muttonbirds/short-tailed shearwaters (in season)

A blue-tongued lizard on the path on Muttonbird Island.

New Years Day was a really beautiful day at the beach! The conditions were perfect and it was a high high tide. There were a lot of swimmers and a few surfers, probably one of the most crowded days we've ever seen at the beach and along the river--which is still to say, not very crowded.

A little island off the beach

Muttonbird Island in the distance

When the tide is low you can walk out to the island just off the beach; but this was the first time we've been that I ever noticed the waves coming in such perfect criss-cross patterns. It was really neat. It may have been that the tides were just right: it was a full moon and a very high tide, one of the roads by the river in town was completely flooded. I took a video of the waves coming in but unfortunately, accidentally deleted it off my phone before saving it to my computer.

Unfortunately our holiday had to come to an end, but it is always a lovely drive through Bellingen Shire. We stopped in Bellingen for gelato of course, which was a good way to end the weekend.

Green pastures of Bellingen Shire

A good end to a long weekend.

Coffs Botanic Gardens

It's always just so stunning to see huge Poinsettia!
This plant was just as tall as me.

We never pass up an opportunity to go to the North Coast Regional Botanic Gardens in Coffs Harbour.  We were hoping we'd spot a koala while we were there but no such luck.  No one had seen any that day when we arrived and our necks soon became pretty sore looking up for the bums in the gums.  But we were told to keep an eye out for a Powerful Owl and owlet in a tree: and seeing that definitely made up for the lack of koalas!

Calodendrum capense: Cape Chestnut from the Cape of Good Hope.

A species of Grevillea, native Australian plant

Elephant Apples

Powerful Owl chick

Both owls had their eyes on us!

The beautiful blooms of a trumpet tree

Noisy miner

As we were leaving I spotted this bird from the parking lot: a Spangled Drongo?

Coffs Activities

Dunes at the beach south of the jetty

Our stay in Coffs Harbour was quite leisurely and we enjoyed the Sunday jetty markets, walked out along the jetty toward Muttonbird Island, went to the Big Banana, walked along the beach and drove up to the Sealy Lookout that overlooks the city.  The best part about driving up to the lookout is the honesty boxes along the road: we passed avocados and brought home bananas, both fresh and frozen, covered in chocolate!

You can take a camel ride along the beach.  This might be fun someday.

The beach south of Coffs Harbour has vehicle access and is dog-friendly.

Now that I know what they are, I realize that we see a lot of Brahminy Kites

The view from Sealy Lookout, looking south.  Looks like rain!

From the lookout, looking over Coffs Harbour

Looking down over the tops of the trees.

Rain from earlier in the afternoon.  We were lucky to never get rained on,
but we had some close calls.

Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos

We were lucky to stay in a really neat location when we were in Coffs Harbour in the beginning of September.  Our holiday accommodation had a balcony looking out over the north part of the central city, including the line of banksia trees that separate the city from the beach.

Sunday afternoon, after we returned from our morning excursions, we could hear the loud cries of a flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos as they swept over the city.  There were two small flocks and a few of one stopped to perch in the banksia.  From our balcony we had an excellent view of the cockatoos as they swooped and called and settled in the banksia (not to mention the rainbow lorikeets in a nearby flowering tree.) 

Black cockatoos are really neat to see, party because they are so big.  They fly almost lazily with a slow beat of their wings and cry loudly.  We don't see them in Armidale very often, and this was the first time we'd seen such a large flock: 'large' being about fifteen or twenty birds.  Before, we've only ever seen them in pairs or groups of three.