Australia : Port Macquarie & Coffs Harbour

Amy : Port Macquarie
After spending more than enough time in the City of Sydney we headed up the East Coast to a beautiful town called Port Macquarie. You cant help but fall in love with this little town. It is so laid back, filled with a lot more mature people and just so tranquil compared to the hustle and bustle of City life.
The train trip and coach trip were just the best as they gave us our first views of wild Kangaroo’s. I think Stu felt a tad guilty as he’d ordered a Kangaroo pizza the evening before. I couldn’t get over how many wild Roo’s were about. Dad you would have been furious as there was a pack of about 20 of them grazing on the local golf course tee hee!
You guessed by it’s name it’s by a port and surrounded by blue crystal waters filled with Pelicans roaming around. Man these things look so prehistoric and almost fake when they fly. I couldn’t get over how big they were!!
In Port Macquarie you got all your usual tourist trips but we chose to have a wander around the town and coast and visit the local Koala Hospital. Around the surrounding areas there is a high percentage of Koala accidents (mainly on the road) and this volunteer/charity founded hospital takes in all the sick and injured Koala’s. It was quite an emotional visit seeing all the poorly bears but we did spot two wild ones (see photo attached) that were in the surrounding bush! As it was only a week before Christmas when we visited the locals were getting into the Christmas spirit and put on Carols in the Park which was pretty cool. Didn’t feel overly Christmas with the 24 degrees of heat in the evening but never the less it gave us our Christmas fix that we were missing.
We also visited the renowned and very well recommended Scampi’s Seafood Restaurant where we shared some Mussels and Oysters and sampled Lobster for the first time. This is an acquired taste and I don’t think I’ll be ordering Lobster again….

Coffs Harbour
Coffs Harbour was our next port of call after spending two glorious days in Port Macquarie. Coming from such a lovely well kept town to Coffs Harbour was hard. Our in famous Australian Rough Guide made Coffs sound pretty similar to Port McQuarrie but as we were staying in the city centre we didn’t experience this until we actually ventured a few KM’s down the road to the Harbour and even that wasn’t the best and well over priced.
Whilst we were there we experienced some of the lovey Aussie Rain again and high winds but to be honest with all the walking we’d been doing it was welcomed to cool us down. Especially when we did a walk to Mutton Island. Mutton Island got it’s name because of all the Mutton birds that nest and live there. These are small little birds but they nest in the ground rather than in trees like most ordinary birds. Seeing there nests dotted about by the walking track was quite different and it was no surprise that we spotted around 6 Salamander Lizard patrolling for the young chicks!
The walk around the island was quite amazing as you got beautiful views of the surrounding beaches and area’s and of course the ocean where we caught a glimpse of a dolphin. I don’t think I’d visit Coffs again but I am glad we made an effort to stay a night there just for the amazing wildlife we managed to see on our walks.