Well we had another fantastic day down here on the coast. We drove for an hour down to South West Rocks. We stopped at a lagoon at Jerseyville, a great spot, didn’t see too many critters though. We met a guy there who after chatting for a while, invited us down the road to his property on the river. He has built a pole with a flat top to entice ospreys to nest there. It’s taken six years and at last they are nesting. It was fantastic to watch them flying in and out, what a great spot, we also saw a Sea eagle and Brahminy kite there but no photos. There were other dams and wetlands just up the road too and there are quite a few stilts and herons around, and it was great to see a couple of brolgas too though a fair distance away.
South West Rocks
Little Bay
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We then continued on to South west rocks. Another great little town on the coast. A beautiful setting there with a nice beach and estuary. The rocks here are fantastic colours and came up really well in the photos. We walked our socks off around here, but there is so many walks, we will have to go back another day as we really ran out of time. Also saw some humpback whales travelling up the coast. And look at the size of the skippies here….enormous. I don’t think I have ever seen such big kangaroos.
Well it’s been great fun checking out all these new places and we have a few new places picked out for tomorrow so catch you then.
Wow what a great day. We drove north today up to Sawtell which is only around 20 minutes on the highway. The coastline and eastuaries here are also spectacular. The weather was fantastic and the colours of the ocean and clear waters of the estuaries made fantastic photos. We are just loving how clean the coast is here, there must be a lot of dedicated people keeping it clean or very nice concentious people living here because we haven’t seen any rubbish in the waterways at all. Absolutely fantastic. There’s so many birds of prey here but it’s been really hard to get really good videos or photos so far but we are trying.
Pied Oystercatcher, Bonville Creek
Immature Brahminy Kite, being terrorised
Spectacular Coastline around Sawtell
Sawtell is also a great town with up market shops and great cafes, we are looking forward to visiting there again. We thought we would do more today but it’s very time consuming walking around these coastal paths which are everywhere and some are also a bit hidden, some pass through rainforest so you never know where you will pop out. Tomorrow will be another great day weather wise so will maybe head south for a look.
Well how time flies, we are really settled here in Urunga and getting into quite a lazy lifestyle at the moment. The mornings are cold so we are not getting out till after 10 am so we will have to get a wriggle on a bit earlier as by that time of day it’s hard to go too far. We did go for a drive to a road out the back of Bellingen called “the promised land” wow what a beautiful neck of the woods. It’s a really nice country drive through forests and you cross the Never Never river a couple of times where there’s nice camping spots and beautiful trees and crystal clear water . Very picturesque. Today we visited friends in Nambucca heads, another beautiful place on the coast. Theres also have a lot of boardwalks and fantastic view points, stunning beaches, estuary etc. we have seen quite a few birds of prey but always too late so we will have to look up more to get good photos. We also visited Urunga boardwalk this morning and the tide was coming in and wow, it was so different after being there at low tide. The herons were wading and fishing through the mangrove trees and the light coming through the trees and with the clear water was just fantastic for some photos. We couldn’t linger too long as we had to meet our friends but will definitely go back there around the same time in the next few days. We just love this beautiful picturesque part of Australia and are looking forward to exploring more tomorrow.
Cheers for now, Steph & Ant
Nambucca coastline and Estuaries
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Artwork at the ‘V Wall’ Breakwater – Nambucca Heads
White-faced Heron – Up close and personal
Some Coastal Birds
An update on our Chloe
Chloe settling in well
Just a quick update on our rescued cat Chloe. She is doing well now, we were getting very stressed as she wouldn’t eat the food we were given when we picked her up and she was in a lot of discomfort, we thought it was maybe kidney problems. We found some broths that she did nibble at and I started adding dissolved spirulina with more water and after a few days she has really improved, even started playing and has so much more energy and is eating really well now and filling out again. She hasn’t taken much interest in the cat enclosure yet but then we have taken her outside for some sun everyday which she really likes. I made a little video of her if your interested, we can’t believe she is the same cat we picked up a week ago. She is a beautiful cat with heaps of personality and a joy to have.
Another fantastic day in paradise. We went for a short drive into the town of Urunga, only about 5 minutes away, it’s a nice village type town, quite small and you can walk from there to the boardwalk down by the estuary. The boardwalk is 1 km long and goes out to the headland and beach, so nice and peaceful walking along there, lots of banksias along the way so we could hear a few honeyeaters in them, but couldn’t get a photo. There’s another off shoot from the boardwalk that goes down further into the estuary and we saw 2 Brahminy kites flying around. Also missed out on good photos as we didn’t see them till too late but we will get our canoe out soon and go for a paddle, to see if we can get better photos. We think they are building a nest there.
Boardwalk over Deepwater creek to Valla Beach
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Just a couple of birds
Murals in progress – Urunga
We drove from there to Valla beach, another perk spot in paradise, another estuary and short boardwalk going over the creek there. We certainly picked a nice day for it, hardly any wind and warm and sunny. It looks like it will be raining over the weekend, we can’t remember the last time we were in rain so it will be a change, we might have to go shopping instead of exploring…..
Cheers, Steph and Anthony.
The beauty of Urunga and Valla Beaches & Estuaries
Well our little trip to Urunga went well, with traffic getting through Coffs Harbour it was around an hour. We decided to leave Chloe in the van instead of stressing her out by putting her in the pet carrier and then in the noisy truck. We had plenty of time so we slowly packed things away, she only started to notice something was up when we put the sliding walls in but we just patted and reassured her a lot and she was fine.
When we pulled up at the van park in Urunga I quickly checked on her and she was miaowing and had wedged herself between the bed and the cupboard so that was good, she came out straight away and had her tail up and was quite vocal but in a good way so she got lots of pats and once we had set up again she was fine. We will put another concertina door in, blocking off the bedroom so she will be locked in there with her litter tray when travelling and it’s not a big space with the bedroom slide in so hopefully she will get used to it. Our other two cats always travelled in the van but were clever enough to wedge themselves into our bed pillows and look out the window and watch the world go by.
Our camping spot on the River at Urunga and collapsible Cat Outdoor enclosure
We have a nice spot here on the river so will be able to blow up our little two man canoe and see if we can get some photos of some river birds maybe. Today we drove up to Dorrigo, we have been there before and it’s a great little village, we had brunch at a nice cafe then walked around the National Park for the afternoon which is another beautiful spot in nature. It’s very dry at the moment but rain is coming for the weekend. It was rather cool up there though so we had jumpers on all day. A lot of birds have migrated north but we still saw quite a few and saw 3 Lyrebirds which was great, they are normally quite elusive.
Dorrigo National Park
We feel very relaxed here and have many day trips planned so stay tuned.
Hello all, we have been having a good time since Toowoomba, we overnighted at the Showgrounds in Tenterfield just over the Qld border into NSW. It was freezing, very windy but we backed up to a little creek, didn’t see any platypus but there was heaps of birdlife, so Anthony got some nice photos out the back window. This pod is a great bird hide, from the back we can take out a couple of flyscreens and open the windows and get a great view if any birds come around.
Superb Fairy Wren
We had a long trip to Moonee beach, it didn’t look far on the map but coming down the range to Grafton was very steep and very slow. We had to have the truck in first gear many times so we were lucky to do around 40 km/ per hour. So our 3 hour trip turned into nearly 5 hours. Moonee Beach is spectacular,a fantastic part of the coast. The van park here takes up a huge area at an estuary and some beautiful surf beaches, great little walks around the headland and lots of birdlife too. We saw a few sea eagles but missed out on photos.
White-Faced Heron
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Moonee Beach
Moonee Beach
We did rescue a cat yesterday after hearing from a friend that she wasn’t being looked after and was going to be euthanised. It’s a long story but we decided we could look after her as we had the 2 cats before and still luckily had the travelling cat enclosure. Her name is Chloe and she is 15 years old. She is a little skinny and was very distressed yesterday but has come good in leaps and bounds today. She is quite the chatterbox now with an amazing array of friendly chirps and meeow’s, very different from her angry face and distressed yowling she was doing when we picked her up. We will slowly get her on a better diet and try to give her a good life from now. Of course she will probably hate the travelling bit but we will try to make her as comfortable as possible and hopefully she will forgive us once we have set up again and everything is back in order.😼😼😼.
Meet Chloe
Chloe warming to the ‘CatMax’ outdoor enclosure
Tomorrow we are having a huge trip to Urunga, maybe 35 minutes 😁😁 The caravan park is much cheaper and we are hoping to hang out there for at least a few weeks and do day trips to the surrounding nature hotspots. Also catch up with some amazing friends and generally chill out for a bit. We will post more photos of Chloe later and will also get a video of her progress.
The stunning Regent Bowerbird of Lower Redwood Park
Well we managed to get quite a lot done over the last week. We had to cut and polish the truck and also the van. Everything’s gleaming now which is how we like it. We had some pretty chilly mornings around 2 degrees, thank god we have 2 heaters, one in the bedroom and one in the lounge which get the van nice and cozy quite quickly in the mornings. The days have been fantastic though, big blue sky everyday. We’ve been down the range to our little bird hotspot at Redwood Park 4 times, we were so worried the first time as it’s so dry everywhere but soon as we walked down to the little creek we could hear lots of bird chatter. There’s a very small amount of water trickling down but it’s isolated to just a couple of small pools now. It must be spring fed, coming up through the rocks so we are so happy that these beautiful birds have this water source here. As you can see by the video and photos, there is a huge number of birds that visit this spot everyday and some of them like the silvereye’s and honeyeater’s are just constantly there, they seem to love bathing.
Little Corella Flyby, Toowoomba Showgrounds Lagoon
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A couple of Flyby’s
We do hear other birds coming quite close but they obviously aren’t that fussed on water, like the whip birds, they were so close today, we were sitting so quietly and could hear them making their calls so loud but they didn’t come down. Also some calls we can’t identify but every day we did see a new bird or two. Wow what a place. We have been so spoilt here I wonder how we will cope when we leave. Which is tomorrow by the way.
Crested Shrike Tit – Lower Redwood Park
Scarlet Honeyeater – Lower Redwood Park
More birds of Redwood Park
Spotted Pardalote – Redwood Park
And a few more birds of Redwood
We will be passing through Stanthorpe to visit some friends and then we will drive a bit further south and overnight at the Tenterfield Showgrounds. We have seen platypus in the little creek on the grounds before so hope they are still there. That was quite a few years ago and things always change. We have had a great stay here in Toowoomba, it’s always a great place to catch up on things.
