Port to Coffs

I wake at 3.30am feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead. I check emails and Flickr messages and then blog about dinner at the Quay in Sydney last Thursday, still making progress! I then make a start on last Friday in Sydney. 

At 5.30am Drew awakes, so I make tea for us both. At this Comfort Resort we have Lipton Yellow Label tea, an old favourite of ours from many stays in US and Canadian Choice Hotels. 

I start my ablutions at 6am and Drew goes in after me. Breakfast starts at 7am, so we go down for that, it is very tasty. 

Drew's Yogurt

Drew's Mains

A selection of fruit - not as large chunks as elsewhere, but tasty all the same

Haydn's Breakfast with Wholemeal toast.
The sausages are back - hooray, the mushrooms are very tasty

Visiting the Drop Bears

Drew has always liked the older name for Koala's, Drop Bears, as he walks under every tree in Australia he checks there isn't one lurking above ready to drop on him. [Co-pilot's note: I am, dear readers, able to provide anyone who is interested with a complete breakdown of the behaviours of our little furry, dope fiend friends. Including the swooping and bombing of some of the subspecies!!] So, today he gets his chance to encounter some. 

We leave the hotel at 9.30am, as the Koala Hospital doesn't open until 9.30am. We head to the Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, which has the role of nurturing Koalas and conserving nature. Once we had paid the entry fee we were shown the 'patient' board, which will look familiar to any of my nursing friends from a few decades ago. It enumerated the koala patients, their ailments and where they came from, as wehn treated, they are returning, as far as they can be, to their original area of habitation. It was a fun half hour where we learnt lots and Drew made friends with Ella and Casper. Here are some of our shots of them:

Smoky Cape Lighthouse 

We left the Koala hospital at 10.40 and hit the road, on our way to the Smoky Cape Lighthouse. The cape was name by Captain Cook, as he sailed past and saw smoke rising from aboriginal fires. 

It was well worth a visit to the lighthouse, though it was a detour to our direct route, as standing high on a narrow headland, Smoky Cape Lighthouse is surrounded by the stunning coastal scenery. The lighthouse itself is beautiful and was built in 1891. 

Scotts Head

Our next stop was at Scotts Head. It is a very busy beach with people surfing and swimming in the area. Indeed a group of youngsters have left all their bags and belongings unattended in one of the barbeque areas while they are in the sea. Very trusting folk these Australians.

This is a selection of some of our other photos

We enjoyed the time in the 27C sun and I looked at the route for the rest of the day, eliminating some of our suggestions not to be too late arriving at the hotel (see I'm catching this 6pm is late bug!!). 

I don't find great comfort from using the toilets here, a message was stuck up on them saying "Red-bellied Black Snakes have been seen around these facilities recently, take care" Luckily none were seen when we were there! 

The beaches of Coffs Harbour

Having arrived in Coffs Harbour just after 2pm we decided to visit two of the beaches we had read about.  

The first, Gallows Beach, is located on the Northern edge of the main Jetty Beach. Gallows Beach is a rocky beach with a short strip of sand. It is 25c, very warm. We took plenty of photos here and all of them are on Flickr (you can search by date, i.e. Sept 18 - please note my Flickr uses UK time, not Australian time, so some of the images from the 18th will appear in the Sept 17 search)). 

Just to give you a taste, this is a panorama of the beach.

We get back into the car and the air-con and head to the marina at the other end of the long beach, before driving up toward the hotel via a petrol station (a novel treat for me, an electric car driver) and filling the car with petrol at $1.675 per litre - that is equivalent to 84 UK pence per litre. Which seems a lot less than we pay! Note the prices in Sydney were around $1.475, prices clearly increase the more you travel away from the big city - this price was consistent with all the other garages in Coffs Harbour. 

Quality Hotel

We arrive at the Quality Hotel at 4pm with Drew having driven 240km in the day. Quality, with Comfort is one of the Choice brands, it tends to imply a little bit smarter a location from the Comfort Inns, and indeed this Quality Hotel was of a very good standard with excellent facilities in what looked like a relatively new building. 

Dinner

We looked at a number of options for dinner today, unlike Port Macquarie and to a lesser extent Newcastle, Coffs Harbour is a big city and our hotel is just off the City Centre. So we had a large range of restaurants we could choose from. Having looked at them we agreed that it would be good to have some Pho, a dish we really enjoy at home. We discovered that the restaurant Tava Kitchen was only .5 of a mile from the hotel, so opted for that.  

To begin I selected Fried Chicken wings. These 10 chicken wings and thighs were served in a sticky sweet and sour chilli sauce with spring onion and white and black sesame seeds - delicious, if a bit sticky on the fingers. Really lovely.

Drew's starter were Vegetarian Spring Rolls with tofu, mushroom, carrot and corn and a side of vegetables served with a sweet chilli sauce. He really enjoyed every bit of them. 

For Mains we both had Beef Pho. As ever this was served with a salad plate of which you could use as much or as little as you want. We used it all!

The pho was made at our request with with extra beef, chillies and vegetables. It was immensely tasty with that rich characteristic fragrance from the boiling of the beef bones in the stock and the lovely umami flavour which is added by the fish sauce. Delicious, satisfying and filling. Food to prepare us for a good night's sleep. 

We walked back to the hotel, stopping in Woolworths (which is a supermarket here) to buy some sparkling water and diet coke for the drive tomorrow.


We got back to the hotel at 7.30pm, this early eating lark is becoming  contagious!! Content and replete we were in bed by 9pm!