Roaming Kangaroos

Sunday 26 November

Another traveling day, as we make our way south towards Sydney. We were quite sorry to leave the hotel at Surfers Paradise, definitely the best accommodation on the tour so far and Colin munched his way through pancakes with maple syrup and brown sugar (!) on top of his usual five courses. We would be continuing along the coastal road, Pacific Highway 1, all the way to Coffs Harbour - 367 kms or 240 miles away. As we left the town behind, we almost immediately passed the border sign between the two states – very insignificant road signs saying “Welcome to New South Wales” on our side of the road, and “Welcome to Queensland” on the other. This was nothing like crossing the border from South Australia to Northern Territory and nothing to take any photos of to mark the occasion. The countryside soon resumed to green rolling hills and pasture, supporting herds of Herefords and Aberdeen Angus (no sheep yet) and fruit farms.

Our first stop was at Byron Bay, another centre for backpackers, a bit like Yangshuo, but on the coast.. The town was made up of small cafes – full of holidaymakers having a late Sunday morning breakfast/brunch - souvenir shops and beach clothes shops. We made our way along the high street to the beach – another beautiful strand of white sands, with huge rolling waves pounding the beach. There were lots of people in the water, and it looked so inviting, I couldn’t resist taking my shoes off and wading in – jumping over the waves like a child!! It wouldn’t have taken much to wade right in – but I didn’t have my swimmers. All that exertion made us thirsty, so time for a drink – the pub was nearest refreshment venue, and we had been told it also had the best loos. When Colin ordered the drinks – Sprite was off – so we just had to have beers – at 10.30 in the morning! But by this time it was very hot outside, so a long cool glass of amber nectar was very welcome. The lighthouse on the far side of the bay has become the most popular place for weddings in New South Wales. A few of the group took a cab up to the lighthouse, for better views of the bay, and were late back – tut! tut!.

We stopped for a short photo break at Lennox Head, another bay, a few kilometres further up the coast. Four hang gliders were taking off from the cliffs, the strong sea breezes taking them up into the thermals. I was amazed at how fast they could go and how much control of direction and height there was. People were flying tandem, so having some hunky Aussie holding on to you could also be a bonus. If we had been stopping longer, I would have loved to have had a go – apparently there are opportunities in New Zealand so I shall be keeping my eyes open for those.

On our way again, it was not long before we came on a “Road Closed” sign for an accident (at least they gave you a reason), but the detour meant, not only would we not be able to visit the prescribed lunch stop, but it would put an extra hour on our journey today. The countryside here was at its best in the sunshine, so we just sat back and looked out of the window. Many of the towns and villages in this area had familiar names – Lismore, Warwick, Glencoe – with smart single storey houses, many raised off the ground so appearing as if they were two stories, with very neat, pretty gardens with lots of flowers.

Our new lunch stop turned out to be at MacDonalds in Casino – a small sleepy town in the back of beyond. We were surprised that Maccy D’s was full of local people – having brunch with the children or grandchildren? – and also that most of our group chose this eaterie over KFC next door. The cost here is so much cheaper than at home – two Quarter Pounder meals for less than 5 GBP.

After lunch Jenn put on a video about the life of a koala bear, but I snoozed through most of it. We passed through Grafton, a fair sized city of around 30,000 inhabitants on the banks of Clarence River (locally known as Big River). As we entered the town we crossed over the river via a huge steel span bridge, which had the railway line running beneath the road. The city has a large redstone cathedral at the centre of the shopping area, standing tall amongst all the other single storey buildings. This was once was a wool port (so there must have been sheep here at one time), but now it concentrates on timber and logging from the nearby woodlands, cattle and potatoes. The residential area had sprawled about five miles out from the centre on our way in, where there is a cement works, and the city was still expanding with several new development sites. It has been called the “Jacaranda centre of Australia”, although most of the blossoms had now died – it was a stunning sight in October we were told.

We were nearly at Coffs Harbour, when we took a ‘surprise’ detour off the Highway to Heritage Village, a new development, still with many hectare plots for sale. As we wound our way along the new road, we saw groups of kangaroos sitting in the shady areas under the trees. One group had sixteen, another fourteen as well as some singles. They sat staring at us as we watched them, some females with joeys in their pouches. One big old male stood up and beat his chest with his front paws – he looked so funny, you could imagine him in the boxing ring – while others hopped with their great long springy strides across the grassy patches and into the trees. The houses in this village do not have separating fences, so the kangaroos are free to roam at will. They were a delight, especially as some of the passengers hadn’t really seen any kangaroos on this trip.

We then made our way into the Novatel Pacific resort on the edge of Coffs Harbour – a large green oasis, with lakes and a golf course, on the edge of the bay. This is another quite tired hotel, in need of some modernization. The rooms were all in a concrete block, painted in old fashioned cream, with heavy metal patio doors which clanged loudly as you opened and closed them. We had all the facilities we needed, and it was clean and serviceable for one night. We were on the fifth floor and from the open corridor outside our front door, we could see an ‘Olympic’ sized swimming pool, whilst from our room, we could see a large lake with lots of water lilies, when looking across the tops of the trees and shrubs reaching up to our balcony. I spent my ‘free time’ checking a couple of the blogs I had written on the coach, while Colin wrestled with the air con system, finally giving it up as a hopeless case – there was a large unit standing on the floor near the windows in the room, with a huge ‘box’ taking up half of the balcony (it didn’t work until a man came and fixed it later in the evening).

The reception and restaurant were in a separate building a short walk away, set beside another lake, with ducks and lizards. We all congregated in the bar for a drink and chat, one of the first times this has happened spontaneously on this tour. Dinner was a table d’hote menu – the entrée portions were huge – pea and hock soup in a large serving bowl, the mushroom risotto was tasty but more than sufficient for a main course. One of the main courses was blue-eyed cod, but it came us as a white fish fillet. For me, the dessert was the best course (how unlikely is that?) – lemon and lime tart – it was delicious. As this was our last dinner together we seemed to spend longer tonight at the tables chatting, and it was well past 22.00 by the time we got back to our room. We still had to sort our suitcases - putting more in our hand luggage, as we could be carrying our bags upstairs at the Victoria Hotel – and complete our comment forms – Jenn has said all the way through the tour, anything we thought could be improved should be mentioned on the comment forms – well there just wasn’t enough room for all we had to say, so it was a case of prioritizing and précising. Overall this trip has been fair, but there have been many instances where small changes could have made a big difference, and the food has not been as good as we anticipated for a premier tour. We have decided to book some day tours in Sydney and Melbourne with APT – we were enticed by the 20% discount - so I hope these are of a good standard – I have every confidence they will be.