Port Macquarie and on the road to Coffs Harbour

Trip Start Feb 20, 2006
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Australia  ,
Monday, March 13, 2006

We visited the koala hospital yesterday. It has between 200-300 admissions each year. Bulldozing of koala habitat is the single biggest threat to their survival. Other major threats are bushfires, dogs and motor vehicles. We learnt that when a koala is released back into the wild it has to be returned to the same place it came from because they are very territorial. Also, even though there are hundreds of eucalyptus species, they will only eat the eucalyptus leaves their mother introduces to them when they are young. Guess what? We are the proud adoptive parents of "Cloud" a female koala admitted to the hospital back in 1994. She was a bushfire victim and is now a permanent resident.

Today, we rode a camel across lighthouse beach. I must say, it's the nicest beach so far. Did you know that there are 950,000 camels in Australia. They came from Afghanistan years ago before the trains. Now, you can see camels in the wild. When we were waiting to ride the camels, we met a couple from Colorado and the man said he was a professional golfer. We forget his name but who knows we might have been in the presence of a great golfer and never knew it Camel 1
Camel 1
 . If you look at the pictures, he's ridding the camel in front of us. For those golfers who might recognize him...

After the camel ride, we caught the bus to Coffs Harbour. It was about a 2 hour drive. As soon as we got here, we looked into doing our Padi course. We were told that it was much cheaper doing it here before we get up to Cairns. We missed a day of theory in the pool but the guys gave us some reading material which I should get to. We have theory in the pool tomorrow and then Thursday and Friday it's the real deal. In total we have 4 dives so were looking forward to that. Internet access has been very limited these last few days and that's why we haven't written. Were hopping it will get better and cheaper once we arrive in Byron Bay. The internet cafes in these little towns close early and cost 5.50$.
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