The plan

The broad plan for this trip is to find a few spots up the coast (or near the coast) of Northern NSW to give us a 4 week (or thereabouts) break from the Winter cold of Canberra.  A feature of the trip is that we'll be taking the small dog with us so are using a travelling with dogs website as our basic resource.

The UK magazine "Country Life" has a cartoon series under the title of "Tottering-by-gently" (possibly the name of a small village just outside Bath).  It includes a Black Labrador as a sort of Greek chorus.  This strip was particularly appropriate.

As with our trip to the UK last year I will fiddle with the publication dates (and possibly times - I will not, hopefully, be updating the blog at 3am or such like) of posts to set this blog up so that it follows a narrative with the planning posts at the start then day by day posts of interesting/amusing events and finally some summarising thematic entries.  I will use Labels to indicate some thematic points of each post.

Why we are leaving

Here is the Canberra weather forecast for the next few days.

This follows the coldest May for decades and several nasty frosts in early June.  While it still looks a bit damp in Coffs Harbour a temperature range from 9 to 18 is a distinct improvement.

A few details emerge

We had thought about going as far North as Hervey Bay but on checking the pet friendly houses up there they all seemed to be under the misapprehension that we were

1. successful owners of a hedge fund (probably a few oxymorons in that); or
2. bank robbers (possibly confusable with item 1); or
3. members of the some political party (ibid).

in that they were charging the sort of prices per week that we paid for 3 weeks accommodation in the UK last year. As the poets might say, sod that for a game of tin soldiers.  We will get by without touring the flood ravaged areas North of the Tweed.

Instead the plan is as follows.

1. Leave Canberra on a Friday and head for Newcastle.  An easy drive to shakedown our arrangements.  Should also fit in some birding at Koorogang Island.
2. Then head up the Coast to about Coffs Harbour and stay for a week;
3. Next stop is a friends house almost of the Queensland border, just outside Murwillumbah.  Rent that for a week.
4. Back to Byron Bay for a week.
5. Finish off with a week at Topi Topi near Forster, where we have stayed and greatly enjoyed ourselves in the past. 

As a starting point I will sing the praises of the internet as a travelling tool.  With a couple of hours trawling and a few email exchanges we have set ourselves up for the whole trip.  As with the UK trip last year all the operators of the places we have selected have been very helpful and easy to deal with.

Here is a map from Google earth showing those spots.

Its about 880km in a straight line from home to Tomewin.  According to Google Maps it is 1116km using the wonderful Pacific Hwy!

To (and at) Newcastle

Packing the car was completed with relatively few problems.  We have always employed a division of labour under which Frances packs all the items into containers and I fit the containers into the car.  Of course having  car available (even with the back seat occupied by a small dog means we get to take a fair bit of stuff with us).  This image shows the unpack at Mullaway.

 The sink and washing machine aren't ours!

The day started a little strangely as we had to go to Queanbeyan to pick up the modem for Virgin Broadband, in the expectation that it would work somewhere along the way.  The background to this is discussed on my other blog. 

Another strange part of the day was that I had only scored about 3 hours sleep the night before and as a result was not feeling too flash.  In fact I felt rather rats faeces (isn’t it interesting that faeces is OK, but a word meaning the same, but beginning with ‘s’is rude?).  A brewing sinus didn’t help!  However I pressed on and the drive to Sydney was pretty reasonable.

Surprisingly there were no cop cars visible on the drive up to Sydney.  The only noteworthy thing seen was a people mover coloured pink and apparently belonging to Susie (as per the number plate) of the St George Dragon Girls (as per the lurid text over the rest of the vehicle).  The 8km of roadworks around Campbelltown was a pain in the gluteal region (isn’t it interesting that gluteal region is OK but a word meaning the same, but beginning with ‘a’is rude?).

We filled up with petrol in Pennant Hills and appeared to be getting >33mpg!  Is this a side effect of the new Cooper tyres?  We moved right along towards Newcastle which Frances navigated us through – displaying great lateral thinking in realising the importance of the location of Mater Hospital in getting to Stockton Bridge.

The business at Stockton was birding. I was initially pleased to see a hide and despatched Frances and Tammy off to other parts while I birded.  Then I found the hide to be locked.  Drat!  On noticing the number of beer bottles and bongs around the place I could understand this. Despite most of the shorebirds being on breeding duties in the Arctic I added a few species to my year-list and got the trip-list kicked off. 

On to the B&B which we found easily in Hamilton.  After a minimalist install there we went for a wander off to Beaumont St to get some tea.  We concluded this area was the equivalent of Paddington. With a horde of restaurants and at least 6 pharmacies in 500m all our needs were soon satisfied (including a snorter for the sinus).

Due to my tiredness I was not awake for long after getting back to the B&B: some of the take-away Green Chicken Curry was to accompany us when we departed.  I got into bed about 1845 and sacked out immediately.  Despite a few disturbances as Tammy was agitated by another guest pooch I slept until about 5:30 the next morning.  I felt a lot better!

Onwards to Mullaway

On waking I went to take Tammy for a walk.  Drat: the sky doth micturate (isn’t it interesting that micturate is OK but a word meaning the same, but beginning with ‘p’is rude?).  What is it about short words?

Breakfast (definitely in the gourmet category) was enlivened by conversation with Laraine and Colin (our hosts) and another two guests.  Much amusement was generated by trying to sort out what would happen if Tammy and the other two guest-dogs (a Ridgeback and a Wiener-dog) got together.  The answer was going to be “apocalyptic devastation” so separation was enforced.  A great start to the day. 

The rain continued until we got almost to Kempsey where we refuelled: again over 33mpg!  Interestingly we were told where the discount petrol stations were by a cop who gave me an RBT (I passed, as I would hope to after only 1 glass of red last night – and none for breakfast today).  The other intriguing factor about the Kempsey area was the number of Cattle Egrets around the paddocks in the flood plain (a bit of foreshadowing there in the use of the word ‘flood’): possibly because this was the first area where we had been able to see paddocks rather than bush!

The driving was quite easy apart from the activities of a caravan-towing driver who drove at 10kph below the limit on 2 lane and 10kph over the limit on overtaking lanes.  Ban the van – or allow RPG launchers on other vehicles!  The only mentally ugly roadworks (physically/visually there is no other form of roadworks) were from Sapphire to Woolgoolga where we were limited to 80kph for (a) 10kms and (b) no apparent reason.  Obviously as it was a Saturday no-one was working.

As we drove along we heard a weather forecast.  It was talking about a flood warning for the North Coast.  Oops: we are not heading South!  The forecaster then said something along the lines of “This forecast is probably conservative” and mentioned 40 –70mm Sunday and 30-40mm each for Monday and Tuesday.  Oh poop.  (Watching TV in the evening the weatherperson singled out Coffs Harbour for mention of thunderstorms! But we are about 15km North of Coffs so perhaps it won’t affect us?)

We found the letting agent and the house and got into it.  The back yard is basically dog fenced but I suspect Tam could find her way out.  The place seems great and the surroundings just what I wanted with a nice dog-allowed beach and some nice heathland to check out.  Some of the Melaleucas are very photogenic as were the Pandanus tectorius (Screw pine) fruits

and the banksias.

We will now have a commercial break.  We were lent, by a naturalist friend, a copy of “Noosa’s Native Plants” by Stephanie Haslam.  Although we are a fair few km South of Noosa we were told this was going to be very helpful and such has proven to be the case.   We also have with us “Ocean Shores to Desert Dunes” by David Keith which covers the native vegetation formations of NSW and the ACT.  As well as describing the vegetation and the soils and situations in which they are found it also gives typical species.  So I am hopeful that by melding these two sources of information we’ll know a bit more about what we are looking at.  A future post on my main blog may cover more on this topic.

After traversing the beach – no signs about banning dogs (Great Lakes Shire please note) – the walk took us on a good bitumen path around a headland.  The only other folk we saw at this stage were three young blokes rock fishing below the cliff.  This may correlate with the memorial sign to “a great dad” at the top of the cliff.  As we came back (since rain seemed imminent) we met the three young persons, each carrying two or three fish, described as “only tailor”.  Since we had seen the remains of a tuna (ie a metre long fish, missing the fillets)

on the beach I could understand the inclusion of ‘only’.   Shortly thereafter we saw, and heard a member of the local intelligentsia doing burnouts with a ute.  The first mild negative for the area!

Getting back to the beach we saw a young woman with two big dogs there. Tammy was hot to go and discuss issues with them, but it didn’t happen: given the relative size of footprints that was probably a good thing!

Several birds were added to the trip list (now at 32) including Torresian Crows and Australian Gannet.  These and 9 other species also did some good for my year list.  A very pleasant evening ensued watching the huge plasma TV with Austar access.

Hand me down that Camphorwood

It seemed to rain on and off most of the night.  Certainly there was much precipitation going on when we awoke in the morning. 

After some fiddling around unpacking stuff and other small chores the downpour seemed to have abated so we headed off for a walk. This time we went basically South, discovering that the land fronting the sea is Coffs Regional Park.  We walked along a couple of headlands and an excellent rainforest gully.  The banksias here were attracting a lot of White-cheeked honeyeaters: always a good bird.  The sighting of the day (at least thus far) was a Figbird sitting on powerlines next to an Olive-backed Oriole.

On the beach Frances found many treasures to be drawn including a very large cowrie shell.  Given the hours we spent searching for these in Tanzania this was a major victory.

Shortly after our return the downpour started again.  There is a reason that the streets in Mullaway have large drains!

To foreshadow what is to come, that drain was overflowing at times in the next few days.

I used the time to fire up the car and head for beautiful downtown Woolgoolga.  We had stayed there in the past but the nice caravan park is not pet friendly so they dipped this time.  The pub provided what I wanted (ie a slab of beer) and also some information about local culture.  It appears that Australia’s top rap band (I’m reasonably sure there are several oxymorons embedded in those four words) are doing their stuff at the Coffs Showgrounds in the afternoon and the rain.  2,500 punters have handed over cash for this, so are likely to turn up.  We are very glad it is no closer to Mullaway!

I decided that the rain had paused for a while so I would go for a short walk on my own.  I added about 6 species of birds to the trip list and found a nice patch of what is normally heath.  In the current alleged climate it is more like ‘bog’.   This is some nearby Melaleucas (paperbarks), both showing the swamp and a detail.

My shoes and socks were thoroughly soaked by the time I returned.  When I took the right sock off I found that invertebrate wars had started, with the leech team scoring an early goal. 

As is usually the case with holiday houses there are a range of notes posted here and there identifying quirks of the building.  My favourite for this place is a suggestion that the laundry door and windows are kept shut when the lawn is being mown or else the smoke alarm will react to the fumes!   If anyone tries mowing the lawn in this weather they had better employ the technology I saw in Lao for underwater chainsaws!

Somewhat later in the trip I checked the Bureau of Meteorology site for rainfall recorded at Woolgoolga.  Today’s offering ‘was 28.4 mm.

La Nina gets upgraded (again)

As forecast the rain has continued more or less constantly through the night.  I recall a trip to Cape Yorke in which there was quite a lot of rain and I decided that the term ‘La Nina’ was not really good since it only reversed the gender. Having in the interim improved my Spanish (from zero to trivial) I now suggest that the better term for what is going on here is La Vieja which also reverses age.  I will also note en passant that yesterday’s temperature range for Coffs Harbour was 13 min to 14 max!

I have just checked in to ABC News 24 TV.  The two places which have received the heaviest rainfall seem to be Yamba (in a straight line, 75kms North of here) and Evans Head (about 100kms).  They have both scored over 120mm of rain in the past 24 hours, with Evans Head coming in at 184mm.   When I get back to internet access I will put in some details. 

The news also covered the impact of the volcanic ash cloud from Chile: we may be getting a bit damp, but at least we haven’t spent 2 days waiting for a flight to happen.  I am astonished that an ash cloud is still an issue after it has blown from Chile across the Atlantic, Indian and (a fair chunk of the) Southern Oceans.  One news service implied that the people providing the advisory service are a private enterprise group – this immediately called to mind the episode in Sydney where a group marketing a water testing service ‘discovered’ a problem, later found to have been introduced by pterodactyl poop.  To misquote from ‘Field of Dreams’: if you monitor it you will find it.

I am beginning to rethink my plan of taking the back roads to Tomewin: the rivers around this way are rather more serious than the two in South Australia! (Possibly because they normally have more work to do in returning rain from whence it came.)

Today’s post could be called “Walking a Soggy Doggy”.  About 10am we decided the rain had calmed down enough to go for a stroll.  Frances had remembered to pack our waterproof trousers so they were donned and off we went around the roads towards Arawarra headland.  I thought this would be about a 6km trip.  I think I got the distance about right but our expectations about the lack of rain were well wrong: it pissed down.  (Sorry about the rude word but it was well past micturation level.)

The next image shows the drain imaged in yesterday's post.  Or at least it shows the torrent overflowing it!

However it was an interesting walk around the area.  There are an interesting mix of houses, from fibro shacks

to rather large architect-designed places. 

There are a number of nice gardens around (hint: lush gardens do not signal a drought zone) with lots of tropical/subtropical plants such as gingers. 

Some of the buildings have unusual designs painted on them.

An interesting observation was the number of tractors around (typically Fergsuson TE 20s – the world’s greatest agricultural device).  They seem to be used mainly for pulling boats down to the water.

Two good birds were added to various lists during the walk: Wonga Pigeon and Spangled Drongo.  The secenery was still great.

Although distinctly wet, the small dog seemed to enjoy herself greatly.  Even at the end her tail was still curled forwards and she was still keen to sniff things and mark her territory.  The latter possibly enabled her to pick the right turn off the main road and swing into ‘our’ drive. (Later evidence suggests this was coincidence.)

After the walk I went to the Mullaway Store to get a loaf of bread and enquired of the lady there what the rainfall had been thus far.  She said that someone had reported 190mm not counting this morning’s contribution. The weather forecast has got Evans Head up to about 240mm by Monday evening.  The rain is supposed to start moderating tomorrow!

Shortly after returning the sun shone briefly!  This made me think about going to take some snaps of the nice gardens etc.  Of course as I walked out the door it began to rain again!  This meant I stayed around the house and thus added Satin Bowebird (4 green birds and one beautiful blue bird)

and Common Myna (boo, hiss).  This has the trip list up to 49 and the Mullaway list to 36.

Mullaway’s ambience has taken a bit of a hit on the Monday as the neighbours appear to have returned (or at least their children have become evident through auditory channels).  That being said, when met they seemed quite reasonable kids.

Rain total today was 121.0mm: that is getting a bit serious.

The weather yesterday was OK

Perhaps that should be ‘relatively OK’?  Overnight the sound of a howling wind made for a restless night for both of us: the small dog simply coiled a little tighter.  At 7am it is still howling and the rain is bucketing down as hard as I have ever seen it.  The weather forecast has just announced a flood warning for a couple of rivers in this area (including the Nambucca, which is not very far South of Coffs Harbour).  The small dog was happy to head for the back door for a toilet break, stuck her nose on the flyscreen and headed back to her blanket.

The drain at the back of the house has given up completely while there is a 2m wide torrent running down the road (in addition to what is going down the 25cm deep drain beside the road).  The block opposite (part of the Regional Park) is completely underwater.  Unfortunately as a result of the Unpleasantness At London Bridge I am not keen on taking my new (yes, it was an expensive UALB) camera out in the rain so the pix are not great.

An addition to the joys of the day is thunder.  Not continual, but occasional celestial rumbles.  Perchance this is why the lights flicker occasionally?  I am assuming it also explains why Austar put up a message about service being resumed when the bad weather goes away.

As there was a small break in the weather I took Tammie for a walk: primarily to get her bowels going since we might be leaving her home for a while today.  Everywhere is flooded and a few trees (or parts thereof) have assumed a prostrate growth form (although they aren’t going to be doing a lot growing from here on).  These two issues came together with the position of our neighbour’s garbage bins. 

It was a nice touch that the guy who mows the lawns etc swung by to check that there was no wind damage around our place.

The surf was definitely up,

but while there were black clouds and thunder rumbles to the South there was blue sky to the North.  Unfortunately our weather is currently coming from the South!

We were starting to get a tad low on a few things so went to the IGA in Woolgoolga- a small town we have stayed at in the past, just South of Mullaway.  The creek there was definitely in flood. 

After the shopping we swung out to the headland to see if there were any whales visible.  The only ones seen were those on the town water supply!

 I am intrigued about the Sikh influence in Woolgoolga.  There is a great new (opened in 1970) temple on the South end of the town 

and what looks like a decrepit old one by the main roundabout going into the CBD.  

In fact the rather decrepid one was a commercial enterprise, and not a Temple at all.From a guide to the town (by that famous author A N Other) it appears that the Sikhs came here for the banana industry.  More detail is given in the excellent book “Woolgoolga Past and Present” by Neil Yeates.  The story appears to be of Indians coming to the area for work on the banana farms (as employees not indentured folk – the first arrival was in ‘about 1939’) and then buying their own farms.  As is often the case with migrant groups, as they became successful other members of the community came to the area, both from India and elsewhere in Australia.  Woolgoolga seems to have been the last area where suitable land could be acquired.  From other comments in this book it appears that the banana industry was a classic ‘boom and bust’ scenario with the bust largely caused by monocultural over-exploitation (how unusual!).  Yeates comments that at the time of writing there were 172 banana farms in the area, of which 93 were operated by Indian families.

I have googled this book and there doesn't seem to be a secondhand copy of it on the market anywhere.  It is well out of print and as Mr Yeates is deceased no-one seems keen on reprinting it.

Shortly after getting home the sun came out so we went for a bit of a rock-comb.  This resulted in us finding several cowrie shells.   There were many other shells

and the pebbles were very shiny.  Although the odd big wave was still coming in the main trace of the awesome storm of this morning was big piles of foam.   

(After about 90 minutes the rain started again, just to keep us on our toes!  But it didn’t last long.)  During this expedition I added four species to the trip list (now 56) including Scaly-breasted Lorikeet.

For contrast here is a Rainbow Lorikeet.

I think I commented about it raining a bit today.  The total was 250.6mm: this is so far more than I have ever seen in a day it is not funny.  In old money it is close to 10 inches and round about 1/3^rd of Canberra’s annual average.

The weather possibly looks better

It does at least look better out of the window.  However I have just watched the ABC TV news and they are talking about the levee at Kempsey (about 150 road kms South, where we filled up with petrol) being breached later this morning.  The Pacific Highway is ‘ímpassable’- presumably just to the North of that town where it goes across the cow paddocks.  They also mentioned a funnel cloud causing a lot of damage at Red Rocks (the next village North).  That is a bit of an issue for us as I was planning to visit that location in the next couple of days to tick Beach Stone–curlew. 

We started the day (as always) with a walk for Tammie.  Our favourite here seems to be a 6km jobbie going down to Arrawarra Beach.  It is a very pleasant stroll covering a range of habitats from what I believe to be Wet sclerophyll forest, some wet heath, a small patch of rainforest (?? it is very small and low but has a lot of creepers and epiphytes);

a dry heathy ‘(also wet this week) headland, a boardwalk through Melaleuca/Mangove forest

and some pleasant housing.  As far as Tammy is concerned, one of the aspects of this trip is that she is getting to meet a whole bunch of other dogs as we go on these walks: she is getting pretty blasé about this.

I had found that we could connect to a Netspace server through the phone line.  This let me look at my emails but was so slow I gave up.  In Dar es Salaam the net service we used was expecting to be used through dial up on Tanzanian phone lines (thus a download speed of about 20kbps on a good day).  Unfortunately gmail is designed for broadband and even their basic service is too graphics-heavy for a dial-up service.  So I decided to go for the library in Coffs Harbour.

That was found quite easily.  They offer two internet access packages: locals get an hour and visitors get 30 minutes.  As this is free it is impossible to complain!  I did what I needed to in about 20 minutes and became aware that the young couple next to me were (a) speaking French and (b) looking with some concern at the RTA website coverage of the floods on the Pacific Highway. 

I decided that sticking my nose in to their business was possibly in order.  They were heading for Sydney where they had to return their campervan on Friday.  They had two choices: (a) hope that the floods go down by tomorrow or (b) go back to Grafton and come down the New England Highway.  As option b added 400km to their trip they were quite keen on option a.  My contribution was to look up the address of the NRMA Office in Coffs and suggest they go there for advice. (I also suggested stressing the French accent.  The fact that the female of the couple was totally charming would not have been a negative.)  Given that the river in Kempsey – the main villain thus far - was not expected to peak until later on 15/6, and the weather system had many more rivers to play with as it moved South I reckon option b was the go.

We have just seen the SBS news coverage of the floods.  They reckon it could be another 5 days before the Highway is open again.  So option b is definitely the go!

While I was doing this Frances went to the Coffs Regional Gallery and to suss out the shops.  The former was not exciting and the latter didn’t involve great outlays (but the pull-apart from Bakers Delight was very nice for lunch).   We then headed for the Coffs Harbour Botanic Gardens. This was, as always, a great place.  The birding highlight occurred when Frances spotted a bird on the ground.  This was a Noisy Pitta, which I hadn’t seen since Dunk Island in about 1995!  My photo was hopeless, so has been trashed.  The one of a Brush Turkey digging a hole – what else do turkeys do? – was a bit better.  I added 6 species to the trip list at this venue.

I was intrigued that the mangroves were not totally inundated.  Things must drain really quickly here as Woolgoolga Creek had also gone back to its channel.  Coffs Creek was sufficiently low that a vandalised shopping trolley was largely exposed, and provided a good drying perch for a Darter.

We came across some sculptures in one of the 'rainforesty' areas of the Gardens and although the image is rather dark I thought it worth including here.

On getting home I took Tammie for a walk along the beach.  It was interesting that there was a massive amount of broken cunjevoi washed up.  Presumably it takes a bit of time for the tide to bring it in.  After that I went for my first run of the trip.  This was a fairly undulating, but quite honest, 4km.  So I can feel virtuous about a couple of glasses of red and possibly the odd cleansing ale while watching the State of Origin match tonight!

A dry day: only 37.4mm of rain!

Too soon to Park the Ark?

The rain has come back!  Relatively gentle, but still above the drizzle level.  Most of the rivers to the South seem to be falling

Despite the expected continued precipitation we set off for a longer walk to Arrawarra Creek.  This was very pleasant most of the time since it was quite warm (which is what we had hoped for, coming North).  There was very little of reportable interest apart from seeing a large pig-dog looking beast snuffling in a driveway.  As the human occupants of the driveway emerged pitching rocks at the invader I assumed it wasn’t their dog.  The lady of that house explained that it seemed to be coming after their dogs.  Frances commented that at least we can pick our dog up.

On the topic of dogs, a house more or less opposite the rock-chuckers has a mutt that usually barks at Tammy.  They have a sign on the gate “Don’t worry about the dog, Beware of the Owner”.  This causes me to recall a sign we saw on Capri: “Çave Canem: ancora il Padrone” accompanied by a picture of a smoking Colt 45!

Getting back from this 8km slog we had some lunch and decided to go and investigate the situation at Red Rocks.  There were two aspects to this: (a) check out the tornado damage; and (b) assess the Beach Stone-Curlew situation.  The former was quite evident, although the damaged house which featured on the TV news the previous evening, while damaged didn’t look as badly done over as the bowling club - which had lost half its roof – or the netball courts – which had lost their fence and I suspect the bench shelter. 

As with our last visit to the area the Beach Stone-curlews were totally non-evident.  Neither were the Brolgas which feature on the community sign!  However I did add 3 species to the trip list (not counting the small waders which we could only see in silhouette on the sun-glare ridden mud.)

After another pause for refreshment, the weather had come really good so I took myself off for a wander around the heath opposite the house, hoping to scare up a Southern Emu-wren.  That didn’t happen but I did get a few images of interesting flowers.

 

I got a fair snap of a White-cheeked Honeyeater and a flypast by a Brahminy Kite.

A very positive bit of action was the erection of this sign.

The penalty would seem to be sufficient to deter folk from evil acts (one hopes that the Council - or NPWS- have some staff to react to tip-offs)!  As most of the houses backing on to the park have no back fences I assume the residents enjoy the access to the 'wild'.  Certainly one lady was taking great pleasure in feeding scraps to 'her' Kookaburras.

This final shot by Jupiter Pluvius scored 61.4mm.  The total for the 5 day event was 498.8mm: somewhat more than Carwoola recorded in the whole of 2009!

A Dog’s breakfast

Given the pleasant weather yesterday evening I suggested to Frances that we might drive to Woolgoolga lookout (a fantastic view) and stroll along the beach there.  So that is what we did. 

I knew from a run on our previous stay in this metropolis that there was a path and several steps down to the South beach and was pretty certain it was dog –OK.   The only problem with the proposal was that I got to the bottom of the steps etc and became unsure if I had looked the car.

So, despite the comments from another dog walker that it wouldn’t matter, it was back up to the car for a click.

As we walked along the beach I commented to Frances that it was a bit surprising there were no sea or shore birds around.  That all changed when we got to the estuary (? Mouth) of a small creek with a rocky islet off shore.  Four species of wader, two terns and the ubiquitous Silver Gull.  We didn’t feel like wading so imitated Mayor Whittington. 

As we walked back we spotted a fisher person with a very large dog about ¾ of the way back.  When we were about 200m away the large dog – by this time identifiable as a long haired German Shepherd – spotted Tammie and charged to investigate.  It seemed totally inoffensive, but I am always unsure how Tammie will react so scooped her up while about 40kgs of Shepherd danced around me.  The big boy headed off back to his owner who by this time had parked his rod and was dragging a large fish around.  On getting closer he apologised profusely for the behaviour of his dog and got it back interested in the large fish: the dog’s breakfast!

We trawled around Woolgoolga a bit and eventually found the library with 30 minutes free internet access for visitors.  Another excellent service from this very good Shire.  There was an interesting ‘alternative script’ in the library – and various other places around the village.  Daylight dawned: it was the script used by the Sikhs!

After returning home for lunch I went to investigate a house with a sign saying “Ding repairs” thinking this might be a good way of getting the dent in our car (from a roo incident about 14 months ago) fixed.  Unfortunately, as the young, tanned and tattooed resident politely explained, the dings he fixed were in surfboards rather than Subarus.  Bugger.   We went for a wander around the heath and along the beach.  The latter was very interesting for the things making tracks in the sand. 

As the surf was a lot tamer today there were a few folk out taking waves (and not, apparently, requiring ding repairs). 

An interesting sidelight was that all the surfers were initially male.  A young woman paddled her (new style) board out but stayed about 50m right of the mob.  To my mind this meant she was getting some fair breaks but was also very close to the rocks.  Was she just being polite or were the blokes a bunch of sexist sphincters (that is a 10 letter polite word: a 9 letter one beginning with ‘a’ would be less polite – but possibly more appropriate)?

I then went for my second run of the trip.  This was around the Headland walk which we have done several times.  The elapsed time suggested my guess of 6km was pretty reasonable.

We have just had a knock on the door.  It was a bloke whose wife had just seen “a small white dog running down the road” and didn’t know of other small dogs in the area.  We thanked him profusely, but it wasn’t Tammie.  This is the second time folk have dropped in to check we (or in this case Tammie) are OK.  What a nice bunch of folk round here.