We hit the road Tuesday morning and drove two hours north on the Pacific Highway to Forster. I had heard plenty about how beautiful the area was and it did not disappoint, it was gorgeous. 
Forster and Tuncurry are towns facing each other on opposite banks of the Wallumba River at the entrance to Wallis Lake, they are joined by a bridge and the first glimpse of Forster when approaching via the bridge from Tuncurry is memorable to say the least. The turquoise water and white sand beaches sit in front of an extremely smart looking town, which was much bigger than I expected and reminded me a bit of Poole in Dorset with its low level apartment blocks with blue glass balcony screens.
There was a huge ocean pool at one end of the beach and, of course, the obligatory drive through bottle shop, I am used to these now but it was a surprise when I saw my first one.
One of the things I am starting to discover about Australian towns is that there are nearly always old buildings to be found in amongst the new, Forster was home to this splendid little old church which was nestled between shiny new holiday apartments on the waterfront.
It was a glorious, sunny day but very windy as we went for a walk along the cliff road, so windy, in fact, that we saw a real life sea rescue! The small boat had broken down and the rescue boat battled through the choppy waters to save the crew. They had a bit of trouble getting close enough to attach a line but eventually managed it and the stricken sailors were towed to safety. We returned home a bit wind blown but vowing to add Forster to our list of places to take visitors to.
Back in Lemon Tree Passage the Lemon Jam took place on Sunday. This is a monthly event in the park at the marina with a band playing, a few market stalls and a barbecue at the milk bar. The organisers have been incredibly unlucky with the Lemon Jam over the last few months as it has fallen on one of our, very few, rainy days each time. Not so this week, the band performing were a bunch we hear rehearsing in a warehouse every Tuesday evening and they were pretty good and I was amused to see the very Australian behaviour of the audience, we Brits would be sitting at the front in the full sun but not the sensible Aussies, they are always gathered around the perimeter in the shade.

Now the warm weather has arrived it has brought with it the start of the country show season. It seems the smaller the town, the more peculiar the focus of the show, so Saturday saw us at the Karuah Wood and Oyster Show! A bizarre mix, I'm sure you will agree, but all the more fascinating for it. Karuah is a small town about forty minutes from us which the old Pacific Highway used to pass through causing a huge bottleneck but bringing plenty of business to the shops and cafes of Karuah. Ten years ago, the new Pacific Highway was built which bypasses the town and, although it is undoubtedly more pleasant to live there, the closed down shops and cafes tell the story of how this little town's economy must have suffered. So the show is pretty important to them each year.
The two main events were the woodchopping competition, which went on all day, and the oyster eating contest. The oyster company running the eating competition have been doing it for years but have not yet realised there is a major flaw in the organisation of the contest. They have a big stall selling oysters at $9 for half a dozen but the competition that runs alongside is against the clock, not a bunch of people racing at the same time. So, if you were unscrupulous you could just pay your $1 entry fee to the contest, you would get a plate of 12 oysters and as long as you ate them a bit sharpish, the organisers wouldn't notice you were just in it for a cheap feast.
Back to the woodchopping. We saw this at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney but because this was a much smaller affair, we could see the contestants getting ready. There was much polishing of axes but then they put on chain mail socks! I must admit I had wondered why there were not more accidents as the competitors stand on the log and chop between their two feet and the winner is the one who's log falls in half first.
The wood chopping fraternity take it all very seriously and it is quite alarming to see how young some of the axemen are, in fact there was a junior competition and some of the boys looked as young as 12. However they all seem to know each other and have fun, I have included a picture of wood chopping humour on one chap's t-shirt.
There was another type of wood chopping going on too with the Tae Kwan Do display. I find martial arts demonstrations terribly dull but this one was livened up considerably by one very fat exponent splitting his trousers.
Of course there was a stall selling that Australian staple, Showbags. Bags of varying prices pre packed with rubbish plastic toys and sweets which are a major feature of every show or festival and even some markets.
Back to the hard slog on the garden now, which is starting to look a bit like the beginnings of a garden at last. The drainage is now in place on the final two terraces and I have even managed to get some veggies planted.

The wildlife is waking up and getting more exciting, we hear koalas grunting at night and this possum turned up on our balcony a couple of evenings ago driving Monty crazy.
We have promised ourselves a day exploring each week and tomorrow we plan to go to Forster, I am quite excited because I have heard a lot about how beautiful it is there.

Spring has most definitely sprung here and it has caught me completely by surprise. Usually, in the UK, when winter is starting to come to an end I sow seeds to plant out months later when any danger of frost is over. Not so here, it was the first day of spring one day then, about a week later, our neighbour had fully grown lettuces in his garden! I can see I am going to have to join a gardening club if only to pick the brains of the other members to find out what to plant and when.

Another, very pleasant, surprise has been the flowering trees. Almost everything seems to burst into bloom at this time of year. Many people grow imported plants in their yards and some look very much like gardens I am used to seeing in England, they even grow roses, which can be quite a challenge in this climate.

But it is the native plants that I am enjoying the most, they are so different to any I have experienced before. Even trees and shrubs that look very ordinary for most of the year are out in their Sunday best at the moment. There are bottlebrush blooms of varying colours all around and the big Banksia trees have finger like growths which suddenly burst into huge fluffy things that the birds love.

It seems there is something new to see every time I leave the house. Interesting things are popping up in our own garden too, like this beautiful Amaryllis.

One less pleasant aspect of spring is the swooping magpies! They are nesting at the moment and they do attack, there are warning signs in particularly attack prone areas.

Apparently they really dislike cyclists and we have experienced this a couple of times already, as we are cycling along we hear a tapping on our cycle helmets which is the magpies swooping and pecking, bike helmets are compulsory here but I didn't realise it was to protect us from magpies!