Cute Koalas in Port Macquarie

IMGP3241
Originally uploaded by theslaad.

We drove on from our bush campsite fairly swiftly to get to Port Macquarie futher along the coast. We had some very good fish and chips for our lunch. I'm tempetd to say that the Aussie fish & chips are superior to British ones. Far less greasy with just a bit of batter and they use all different sorts of fresh fish.
The Port Macquarie area is somewhere you're supposed to be able to see Koalas in the wild so we took a walk along a trail that led through some forest and over the beach. We had our best koala spotting eyes on but didn't manage to see any.
Since we were staying in a town we thought we'd take the opportunity in the evening of experiencing a bit of night life. We walked a few km into town expecting to come across a pub or 2 on the way but we didn't really find anywhere until we got to the main harbour. We sat in a very Aussie pub/hotel which has designated betting & Pokie areas.

Following our disapointment with spotting any wild animals we took a visit to the Bilabong Koala Breeding Centre. They have many very gorgeous koalas who we're all having a nice snooze or a bit of a scratch. We didn't realise quite how cute they are - I took a polaroid photo and it looks as though I stuck a teddy bear in the tree. There were some other nice fellas at the centre including some 'roos and wallabies, lizards just wandering around, scary emus, scary cassowarys, pythons, wedge tailed eagles, sleepy wombats and possums and a nice long billed cockatoo who talked to us. It was a cool place to visit - all native Australian species, something you don't really get when you visit similar places at home unless it's a farm.
On our drive back into town we spotted a mob of Kangaroos chilling out on the golf course - very cool to see so many in the wild after meeting a few captive ones.
That night we moslty sheltered in our van and ate cheap pizza to keep out of the rain. We thought that Australia was having it's worst drought for 200 years but so far it's rained about 3 nights out of our 7 in the van!

The following day we drove to Coffs Harbour via inland a bit to Dorrigo National Park. We visited their visitors centre and walked along a skyway to get some pretty nice views across the rainforest. We felt quite intrepid and a bit under prepared afterwards as we took one of the advertised walks through the rainforest to Crystal Waters Falls. I was very nervous that a python might fall from above at any moment but Chris assured me that they only squeeze you to be friendly ! We were impressed by the falls as you could walk behind them and they had quite a lot of water running through.
Our drive to Coffs Harbour was easy enough and we booked ourselves into a fancy campsite with swimming pool.
Yesterday we did what had to be done when you come to Coffs Harbour and went out to the BIg Banana. It's not quite as big as we expected but quite funny. We hope to see more Big things as we make our way around. Had a nice BBQ for lunch and a swim in the pool in the afternoon. We were a bit disapointed when we couldn't find a cheap small BBQ to use from the supermarket until we realised that there are BBQs everywhere - campsites, rest stops, near to beaches - it's great.

Today Chris was meant to go out diving but unfortunately it's too windy ( I don't know - Aussie weather), so we're catching up here and then are making our way to the surf capital of Byron Bay.