Sawtell is now Seen and Told

Bird of the Day:  Red-backed Fairy-wren.  Spiffy and not often seen by me.  Spangled drongo, Brown Cuckoo-dove and Double-banded Plover definitely all contenders.

Plant of the Day:  Melaleucas in the swamp behind the campground. 

Scene of the Day;  Looking out from the headland at Sawtell.

Art of the day;  Mosaics on the wall of the Memorial pool at Coffs.  Mentions given to the displays of baskets and prints in the Regional Gallery at Coffs.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  Unnecessary restrictions due to road “work”.   There is a speciality of ineptitude in this regard around the Pacific highway work,

Maximum Temperature 21 Minimum temperature  10

Distance traveled  with camper 0 without camper 100

Another splendid dawn.  

I particularly liked the sight of the breeze blowing the spindrift off the crest of the waves.

We decided we'd do the walk to Pipe Clay Lake, where I went yesterday, but in reverse to cover the new country early on.  Thus we began by going across the town playing fields.  The soccer (I object violently to the producers of this miserable game demanding that it, and it alone, be known as 'football': if they want a name other than 'soccer' why not get real and call it 'BORING') fields were in great shape, but the Rugby area needed a bit of a mow.  Judging by the height of some of the melaleucas. it needed a mow in about 2005!

Here is a Melaleuca in the middle of the swamp, busy justifying the common name of paperbark..

A very unusual set of spider webs.

This is part of the boardwalk around and over Pipe Clay Lake.  There are no signs about who has erected this, but some of the boards that were past their use-by date had been replaced and others were marked for that to happen.  Possibly it is something to do with the Aboriginal Education Centre which seems to back on to the lake area.

Monkey Vine.

I find the veins in rocks interesting and wish I knew enough to interprt thm (or at least ID the rock)!

As we got off the beach a male Red-Backed Wren performed for us.  I'd been looking for one of these ever since we got to Murwillumbah.  I didn't get a photo, unlike the more obliging Spangled Drongo perched in the next clump of Banksia..

On into Coffs Harbour getting very annoyed at the galahs building the new Pacific Highway who had about 8km limited to 60kph for "road work" where there was no work going on - it was completed, except for someone needing to remove all the signs and barriers that reduced it to 1 lane.

Once in Coffs we defeated the wiles of the Council and actually found our way to the Visitor Information Centre.   Where the Pacific Highway goes through that town has got to be the worst bit of traffic in the country: presumably its because it is too difficult/expensive to acquire the real estate needed for a by pass and the businesses currently along the street can't be accessed any other way.  Problem not bilong mi, but it is a shemozzle.

This let us find the War Memorial, and very nice it is, with a statue of Simpson and his donkey as a capital.

This mosaic is beside the entrance to the War Memorial Swimming Pool.

In the bottom left corner of the mosaic (below the cockatoo) are the words to "Lest we forget".

Frances went for a look at the Regional Art Gallery while Tammy and I went on a walking track beside a Creek.  After we  recombined we went to the Botanic Gardens which were, unsurprisingly, canophobic.  I took a quick snuffle inside but failed to find a Pitta.

So on to Sawtell, which we had never been to before.  I think that is an error as it's a lovely town.  We noticed a walking track to some mud flats and added that to the To Do list and went to a lookout.  After checking the astonishing beach and Island views in both directions we went down to get a closer look.  This was quite steep but did generate my first sighting of Brown Cuckoo Dove for many years.  

At the bottom surfing was happening.  I was rather impressed with the second image.

This is the main street of Sawtell: nice shade for the latte set but I suspect not too popular with coach or truck drivers.

We ducked into the place labelled "Tourist information" which turned out to be the reception area for the RSL Club.  The duty person couldn't tell us the location of either the War Memorial (in a park on the far side of the RSL Club car park) ...

.. or the town clock (50m from the entrance to the club).  In fairness to her we had read the notice about the clock and wondered where it was, not turning to look immediately behind ourseleves!

We then went and visited the estuary and were annoyed to get to the gate and find cars were charged $5 to enter.  Later we discovered this charge was just visible on the entrance sign.  However pedestrians were free so we parked in a side street and walked.  It was actually worth the five bucks with nice shady trees, good mangroves and some mud flats with a few waders.

So that is the story of Sawtell.

We decided to return via a back road going through a few villages, and then hoping to find "Gentle Annie Forest Rd".  Of course we would be vigilant for Unregistered memorials.  In the second settlement we came to - Coramba - we found a Community Hall established in 1914.  On going down the side and peering through a window I could see Honour Rolls on the wall, but there was too much reflection to take a photograph.

At the next village Nana Glen I found the Memorial Hall, dating from 1907 but couldn't get into, or even a look into it.  I liked the painting of Leseur's Two Tailed Skink on the front!

We then followed the road towards the highway which was a pleasant rural track but did not find Gentle Annie's Forest Rd.  On getting back to the Old Pacific Highway there was a sign telling us to go back towards Coffs Harbour to get to Grafton etc.  So we did (about 3km) only to find access was blocked and some idiot in Hivis was there to tell us go go back the way we had come.  I was trifle annoyed about this and put in a few minutes trying to politely explain the problem to him, but he was the ultimate jobsworth and din't care about anything except not letting people on the highway.  I then received advice that we needed to be elsewhere and went there- about 15km of Old Pacific Highway at 60kph because that was the speed limit.

I think it was this night that the people who had just arrived at the next site asked me, just on dark, to explain to the park owners that they had to bail out to get back to Adelaide asap as their house had been burgled and trashed.  They were planning to go via Tamworth and I suggested it would be easier driving via the highways and motorways to Sydney.  (I've just checked Google Maps and they suggest Tamworth then across to Broken Hill as the best route, about 35 minutes shorter than my suggestion and an hour shorter than Tamworth-Hay,  Still about 22 hours of time on the road: not good to set out on a trip like that in the dark, when you're upset and towing a large caravan.  Hope they made it OK.

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