Vada Heads of the Mid-North Coast

Bird of the day: Eastern Reef Egret.  

The big flock goes to an enormous collection (about 150 birds) of Hardhead in the Belmore River..
Flower of the day: An unknown aloe in a garden near Flynns Beach

Garden of the day: No award today..
Geological feature of the day: Two colours in adjacent  rocks at Nobbys Beach.

Other contenders will appear below, only slightly unhappy at missing out on the biggie!
Outstanding Weather feature of the day; Warm and sunny all day!  Not the forecast for this area tomorrow!
Council behaviour of the day: Bouquets for dog access at Lighthouse Beach (Port Macq) and Hat Head (where the Council appeared to have controlled NSW NPS).  A brickbat for the restruicted hours at Crescent Head.

As we set off for our dog walk a blimp was cruising over the town.  It continued to do this all dy, showing that the wind was very light.

This is a view of the headland at the South end of Nobby's Beach.  The purple arrow marks the obelisk on top of the rock.

In the evening - you should excuse the jump in time - I climbed up to it on a rather steep track which would be great fun if wet.  The obelisk commemorates two guys who died at the base of the headland in 1874 - one who got into trouble in the water and the other who jumped in to try to save him.

Getting back to the dog walk, this is the whole plant of 'flower of the day'.

Our main expedition on this day was focused pn Crescent Heads about 30km North.  To get there we took a ferry across the Hastings River.  I took a snap of some pelicans on a sandbar but decided that the roll cage on the ute next to me made a nicer image.

We took the Maria River Rd to Crescent Head expecting this to be good for birding.  In fact it was just about devoid of birds and there was no sign of the River.  Most vegetation was in a Nature Reserve which apart form being canophobic had no obvious means of public access.

As well as the reef Heron which was Bird of the day our first Darter of the trip was on the rocks at Crescent Head.

In the water were many surfers.  Apparently the town is famous for its break, and is also a convenient distance North of Sydney for those heading up the Coast to stop off.

The strata on the headland to the South of the town were a  contender for geological feature of the day.

There were two traditional signs on most beaches: one banning things (eg dogs) and the other setting out bag limits.  It would be interesting tosee if these vary by site or follow some standard.

The Crescent Head War Memorial.

Frances had a conversation with the lady in the bakery (who gave good pie, and excellent pumpkin bread) and she suggested going to Gladstone and some other small towns up there.  Gladstone had an interesting War Memorial is that it was a street (Memorial St) with 10 small posts topped with memorials to individuals who had died in conflicts from the Boer War to WW2.

The town also had this rather spiffy, and large Police Station.

Overall it seemed a rather pleasant and well-looked after town.  This became particularly interesting on the way home when we crossed the Macleay River to Smithtown, the site of a huge Nestlé factory.  The latter town was run down and daggy - obviously where the workers lived.  It didn't have a Memorial of any sort so isn't really a town!

In between visiting those two settlements we went to Hat Head.  This about three streets lined with holiday shacks, plus a canophobic caravan park,  To our astonishment the beach was an off leash area so on we went.  The beach was magnificent - and not crowded.

We headed back home through Kempsey finding a memorial to the dead of the Macleay District as we went.

By now we were getting a little low on fuel so swung into a service station which was charging 142c/l which was a fair bit better than the 145c/l being asked in Port Macquarie.  Then I found that they were adding 1.5% to the bill if you used a credit card so moved on.  In fact we moved about 400m down the road to a place which charged 134c/l! Go figure the economic rationale of that.  (The next day, as we left Port McQ a place on the highway - about 10km from the town centre- was asking 132c/l which is even more bizarre.)

We had some daylight left when we got back to Port Macquarie so I climbed up to the obelisk as reported above.  On descending a Brahminy Kite was perched on a rock.  I really like these birds, which seemed to be very common on this trip.

We then moved down to Lighthouse Beach, which Frances had visited the previous evening.  It took a bit of reading to work out where the dog area was but it started at these arher magnificent rocks.

Another magnificent beach - the specks in the distance are some of the many folk exercising their pooches.

The dog friendly area was quite well used which the canophobic area was unoccupied (apart from one person transiting it with their dog, and a surfer leaving the water).  That demonstrated the total daftness of year-round dog restrictions.

The cloudscapes were very attractive.

Back at the camper we reviewed the weather forecast for the next few days and decided Corindi, with 50kph wind, was not what we wanted so decided to head for Grafton instead.

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