Koala and whales

Another thing on my must-see list is to seeking out and meeting some authentic Aussie animals in their natural environment. It seems important to do this in case I never make it back, or they aren't able to hang around until I do. So I was very excited about our trip up the coast to Port Stephens, the home of the koala and a motorway for migrating whales.


We rented a house on the beach with fantastic sunset views. The major downside was a lack of opportunity for Howard to make fire.



We did manage to spot a koala, but it wasn't at the special reserve we visited. The volunteers there said they'd been too busy making a mosaic to notice any koalas, but if we saw any to let them know. Fortunately there seemed to be a resident koala in a tree outside our house, so all was not lost. He was a cute fellow, but try as we might we couldn't spot him moving at all.



At 32Km long, the nearby Stockton beach sand dunes are the worlds biggest continuous mass of mobile sand, and we set off in a 4WD bus to experience sand dune surfing. I don't think its quite as demanding as real surfing, but a bit more like sledging. The kids loved racing down the slopes, we finally seem to have found an activity that all of us are willing to take part in. It was quite a buzz, but hard work trudging up the hills again afterwards, lugging the suddenly exhausted children.


The vast, sparsely populated coastline, posed a real problem to the Aussies in the second world war, so they left thousands of concrete pyramids up and down the coast to act as tank traps. There are also other relics of different civilisations in the dunes from Aboriginal middens, to the rusting hulks of ships, and a tin shanty town from the depression of the 1930's.

We wouldn't be us if we didn't attempt to drag our kids on a walk, but we kept it small. At 2km long and 161m ascent, even Evan managed to walk a lot of it. He definitely more impressed by the the chocolate frogs than the view.





There is something quite magical to me about the idea of a whale, and I really wanted to go and see them, but my past experience of whale watching have been mixed. There was the boat trip off eastern USA where after hours we may have seen a black dot on the horizon, and then almost bumping into a whale in the breakers 50m off a beach in South Africa. We weren't disappointed by our boat trip out into what was effectively a whale motorway. They seemed to be all round blowing, sky-hoping, waving at us and even jumping out of the water. Even Carys was impressed and started to get excited, although it was hard to drag her away from her Peppa Pig magazine. I'd love to bore you with the photos, but somehow they are all faint black dots or splashes, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

On the way home we stopped to check out Newcastle, a large industrial town on the coast which is being regenerated. Australia really is an amazing country in that there are fabulous beaches and coastline wherever you go. And even in winter at 22 degrees and with a immaculate blue sky, you wonder why you would ever want to live anywhere else (don't panic mum).