Port Mcquarie, Coffs Harbour
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
146
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Coffs Harbour, Australia
Saturday, January 13, 2007
No luck with the fishing so we decided to head onwards and upwards (well, back to the motorway first!) and head to Port Macquariea. We did considering stopping at some of the campsites in the national parks on the way but a few of the best ones were only accessible via unsealed roads, which is a complete no go in a rental car. We arrived in Port Macquarie late in the afternoon, apparently is was once the place where convicts were sent if the authorities considered Sydney 'too cushy'. That made me chuckle because it's quite a pleasent place now. We didn't really stop to be fair but we did drive right along the coast, which is strewn with lovely beaches and look out points. We decided to stop just outside of the main area in a fab little holiday park called Jordan's, it was at the far North West of the area right at the mouth of a river. As we drove towards it we started going past all these really, and I mean really, posh houses and we started to think maybe we were in the wrong area, but right at the end was the holiday park. It was also a boat hire place and we did think about getting a boat for a couple of hours to go fishing on the lake but it was really too windy, which the owner pointed out, so we scrapped that idea. Luckily for Lee the park was right next to the river, with two little beaches meaning he could fish while I could swim but I had rubbish boring stuff like washing to do, so I left him to it and then went down later on to find him fishing from the beach with a little helper, a young boy who was at the beach with his family for the day. Lee said he'd been helping him fish all day and really wanted his own rod. While I was there Lee landed a few fish but they were too small to keep so we had to chuck them back, unlike the family at the other end of the beach that just kept everything they caught, with the mother cleaning and gutting the fish on the beach in case the Fishing Patrol came round, that way they can't tell how big the fish were properly. Peed me off a bit because if everyone did that there'd be no blooming fish left for anyone and besides we could have had fish for dinner but we didn;t because we're good and we throw undersized fish back. Where are the fishing patrol when you need em eh?
I decided not to have a swim as the sun had gone down a bit and it wasn't as warm, but I did have a bit of a paddle because the water's not cold at all. The beach area was really nice, in most open spaces in Oz, where there's a beach or a bit of green, there's always some sort of toilet facilities, sometimes even a shower, and normally some sort of picnic area and barbecues. This area was no different. The two beachs were small, half crescent shapes of golden sand a few feet apart, with the sand raising up at the back to meet with the green grass at the top of the bank, and just behind on the bank, was the picnic area. It's great to see families just park up around dinner time, unload their eskies and picnic baskets and just unload huge feasts then get the barbecue going, it's a real social affair, normally a bunch of kids will be unloaded from several cars along with bikes, body boards, inflatables etc... then they're left to play while the adults sort out the food and drink. While we were fishing and sitting on the beach there must have been three or four families having a picnic dinner of sorts. I guess it's easier to do it here because of the weather but it's still a great idea.
The following day we drove from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour, which I thought was much nicer. We parked up at the harbour/breakwall area and headed to Fisherman's Co-Op as recommended in the Lonely Planet, where we feasted on delicious fish and chips (well i had rice and salad with mine) for not much money at all. It was roasting today, blisteringly hot. So we sat in the shade and ate our lunch while watching the seagulls squabble over the chips being thrown from various people sitting outside the chip shop. Once we'd scoffed our food, we had a wander along the breakwall, down by the harbour and along towards Mutton Island. We could see loads of fish in the harbour and Lee was dying to get his rod in so we decided to walk back to the van and drive around to the jetty to see if we could fish from there. The breakwall/harbour area was so busy, bustling in fact, with tourists and locals all enjoying the fresh fish and the sun. It was such a blessing to get back into the van, we sat in it looking at the brochures on where to stay with the aircon on full blast. We then drove around to the jetty and had a walk along it. According to the Lonely Planet, there's a tradition that at high tide all the locals jump from the jetty into the sea. As we walked along the jetty in the blisteringly hot heat, we could see all these children and adults just jumping into the crisp cool blue sea, it looked so good, Lee had his boardies on but I didnt' have my swimwear on but we were both tempted to jump in. Luckily for us, we decided to walk to the end of the jetty before taking the plunge, because when we got back to the jumping point we could see that everyone, and I mean everyone, had gotten out of the water. A few kids were pointing and shouting to people still in the water. We wondered what was going on so wandered over and saw a huge ring of sting rays in the water and when I saw huge ring, I mean about 200 of the little blighters. They were literally swarming in the water. From what we can gather it's unusual for this to happen. We must have watched them for over an hour, it was so facinating, long enough to get sunburnt! The people on the beach, swimming in the sea, just couldn't see how close they were to the rays. It was amazing to see, really amazing. Some people suggested it might be to do with mating and others feeding but we're still not sure. It's really funny because the beach just looked perfect, the water so inviting but when we saw the stingrays I had second thoughts about getting in, then while we watched the rays we spotted jellyfish in the water as well so we both changed our minds about the invitingness of the water. We still lazed about on the beach for a while and I did brave the water a bit, but only in a few feet and well away from the rays and jellyfish.
We drove 30km further North and stopped at a lovely little holiday park on Corindi Beach. We were going to stay in Coffs Harbour but the holiday park was well out the way near the motorway so we chose to stop at the beach place which was both nicer and cheaper - bonus!
