Apologies for the lack of blogging recently but we have just returned from a month in England following a family bereavement. It was a sad reason for the trip but we managed to catch up with friends and family which is always a pleasure.
Back to where I left off on our trip up the East coast to meet up with Zoe. We hit the Pacific Highway heading north again after our night in Coffs Harbour, taking note of the amusing place names as usual, Tom Cat Creek, Possum Brush Road, Henry Hawkeye Edwards Bridge, Middle Brother Road, I could go on and on. Our destination was Ballina and it was interesting to see the crops change as we headed towards warmer climes, bananas are the main crop in Coffs Harbour but sugar cane took over as we passed Grafton.
We arrived in South Ballina in pouring rain but discovered the campsite we had booked was fantastic, right between a huge beach and the Richmond River. Once the rain stopped we went to explore and found the campsite had a full size flying trapeze where they gave circus lessons every Saturday! 
The campsite is on the very tip of South Ballina where the river meets the sea and we stood on the huge breakwater between the two marveling at how the water on the river side looked almost black while the sea on the beach side was blue. The whole area was surrounded by National Park so Monty had to stay in the car but we spotted a couple of echidnas and several birds we don't see at home. Monty was not allowed on the beach either so we drove to a dog friendly one nearby and sat watching people in their 4WD vehicles bombing up and down. I think I may have said before that I don't see the point of this, anyone who knows me understands how much I love cars and driving but I can't see the sense in messing up my own car with sand and salt water. Must just be me because plenty of people enjoy doing it, in fact not far from us there are huge sand dunes where people take their 4WDs and the local McDonalds even has a free air pump in the car park for them to reinflate their tyres! Anyway, enough about that and back to the trip.
Next day we awoke to sunshine and took the chain ferry across to Ballina before setting of to pick Zoe up from the airport at Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. I had been looking forward to Ballina because it is home to the Big Prawn which I had heard was one of the better Big Things and it did not disappoint, it is splendid!