Dawn over Town Beach
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This morning dawned grey, with just a hint of sunshine. I took Scully out for a morning toilet on the park area in front of our hotel, overlooking Town Beach. The early morning light was beautiful.
Dawn over Town Beach |
For breakfast we walked down the hill into town to find a cafe. At one of the crossroads there were cafes on three of the corners. We checked out two of them before settling on the third, one known oddly by the name of Casualties Espresso. It has a medical cross on the sign, so I guess maybe the site it is on used to be some sort of medical practice? They had a museli with fruit and yoghurt, which we both tried. It was good.
 Dawn over Town Beach |
After breakfast, we drove up from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour for lunch... and to see the Big Banana! This is a famous roadside attraction, a giant rendered concrete banana, which you can walk through, and pose in front of for photos and so on.
 Monkey at the Big Banana |
M. really wanted to come here to get a photo of Scully in front of the Big Banana. We also checked out the gift shop, and M. bought me a pair of socks with banana motifs on them. Oh, and we got some lolly bananas to snack on in the car while driving. The Big Banana is not just a banana - there's also a fun park with waterslides and rides and a reptile house, and other assorted stuff like that. But all that cost extra so we made do with a quick browse of the cheese shop before heading off.
 Scully at the Big Banana |
We didn’t really have any plan for lunch, so I asked one of the staff at the Big Banana and they recommended an area down by the Coffs Harbour Jetty, with several eating places to choose from. We didn’t really want a big sit-down lunch, so we found a place called K'pané Artisan Bakery there and had pies for lunch. And we were glad we did, because they were incredibly good, so much better than what we had at Heatherbrae’s Pies yesterday. M. had a pumpkin and lentil pie, while I had a pork and fennel sausage roll and a Penang pork pie. I also did a review for Snot Block & Roll.
 Pies and sausage roll from K'pané Artisan Bakery |
After eating this delicious lunch, we took a walk around the foreshore and marina area to see the sights and exercise Scully. There's a long jetty here, which seemed to be a popular place for people to walk or ride bikes. It was very sunny now, so we didn't walk out along the jetty, but kept to the grassy areas on the shore, where there were some trees for shade. We walked around some of the buildings and ove to the breakwater on the opposite side of the peninsula, and then headed back to where we'd parked.
 Coffs Harbour Jetty |
To get to the car we had to go back past K'pané Bakery. This was too much temptation, so I got a lemon meringue tart, and it was also amazingly good. Now I’m going to be upset that this wonderful bakery is over 500 km from home.
On the way back to Port Macquarie we stopped at Urunga to have another walk. Here there is a boardwalk over a mangrove swamp in a tidal inlet, all the way out to the beach. This was a lovely walk, and we spotted several interesting species of birds, many of which I photographed.
 Bar-tailed godwit |
This (above) is a bar-tailed godwit. These birds migrate to southern Australia from northern Siberia. This species in particular has the longest non-stop migration flight of any known bird. This guy will be heading back to Siberia some time in the next month or two.
 Far Eastern curlew |
And this is a Far Eastern curlew, which also migrates to Siberia. This was a particularly good one to get a photo of, as it's an endangered species, with only around an estimated 30,000 individuals. (Wikipedia says 38,000 in 2006, but another site I found suggested numbers have been falling in recent years, and quotes 33,000 in around 2014.)
 Carpet python |
We also saw a snake! This one was curled up in a tree. I'm pretty sure it's a carpet python.
Following this we drove back to our hotel, then went out for dinner. We found a very nice Mexican place called Luna Bonita, and had some excellent soft tacos. This was a nicer meal than last night. So all round it was a great day.
 Tacos at Luna Bonita |
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