Yamba to Coffs Harbour via Lawrence and Grafton

Another fabulous day has greeted us today. We had breakfast on the main street at a cafe; bacon and egg rolls; very nice. After another coffee, and a quick visit to the NRMA to ask about the ferries and Sydney tolls, we headed off. The journey took us through Maclean, where all the electricity poles are painted with various tartans. We came across a stand of trees which were full of fruit bats. There would have been literally hundreds, if not more than a thousand.

I don't recall having seen them in such numbers as this, and didn't realise they make such a bizzare noise. While they were mostly just 'hanging aroud', occasionally one would take flight. They are pretty big with their wings spread.

Another lifting bridge took us over an arm of the Clarence river, this one on the way out of Maclean.

10km or so from Maclean we waited a short time for the ferry, which took us to the north side of the river. This one was free.

A very quiet and pleasant drive, having avoided the main highway, brought us back into Grafton where we paused a short while for lunch and to stock up on water and get petrol.

Grafton is renowned for its jacarandas, however they are not flowering at present. The same can not be said of the tulip trees (I think that's what they are). This one was across the road from the petrol station.

After mucking up, and ending up on the Pacific Highway, instead of the long way round via Glenreagh and Nana Glen, as planned - didn't realise until too late to go back - we approached Coffs Harbour. Just north of here are a string of jewel-named beaches - sapphire, emerald etc.
We pulled into Sapphire Beach and found it deserted except for 4 other people; it started to get busy as we left, with another two people arriving. There was a slightly raised platform from where we could see more whales.

After a short time in the visitors centre we arrived at our accomodation. We've booked for 2 days so that we can give the area it's due attention. The unit has a separate bedroom, so hopefully the fridge wont keep us awake all night. It's not exactly the cleanest place we've stayed (even Grafton was better - actually Grafton was spotless)). Still it will do, it was very cheap.

We went out to get some tea; the hotellier suggested a couple of places, including the bowling club, but we didn't fancy that sort of thing, so we went to what we thought was supposed to be 'eat street', but found only 5 or 6 open places, mostly Indian, which I'm not keen on. We went into one place an waited more than 1/2 an hour and our order still hadn't been taken, so we abandoned it and went in search of alternatives. Eventually we found a fish and chip shop up on the highway, which had in reality shut, but they agreed to grill us some fish and fry us some chips. These we devoured in the hotel room. I went next door to the petrol station to see if they had coffee, but found that it too had closed. We settled for a cup of tea.

All in all, apart from minor problems with dinner, a rather pleasant day.