Australia is still reeling from the result of the EU referendum last week, and that is saying something because there is a General Election here on Saturday and it looks like being a very close run thing but still Brexit is stealing all the headlines. Voting is so complicated in Australia that there are infomercials on TV telling people how to fill in their ballot papers, no ticking just the one box here, there are many, many boxes which have to be numbered in order of preference.
Enough about the referendum, I can feel a rant coming on and this is not the place for it, and back to lighter issues. Zoe flew back to Newcastle with me from Melbourne for a few days holiday and managed to time her visit to coincide with a spell of wonderful weather. We had been lucky to dodge the rain the whole time in Melbourne but the sun really came out for us up here. It is the middle of winter at the moment but the days are generally sunny and temperatures hover around 20 degrees although it drops down to around 10 degrees at night, so we can be in t-shirts during the day and big sweaters in the evening. We make a fuss partly because we have acclimatised but also because the houses have no insulation or central heating and are built to get as much shade as possible. Winter only really lasts for about 8 weeks though and then it starts to warm up again.
It is the height of the whale migration at the moment and it is a bumper year. Since controls over whaling have been taking effect, the humpback population has increased each year and they are swimming past us in Port Stephens at the moment on their way to calve at the Great Barrier Reef. So we set off to Nelson Bay to hop on the Imagine Cruises catamaran for a whale watch cruise. In Nelson Bay they are marking the whale season with an exhibition of decorated whale tails around the marina (a bit like the painted elephants in London a few years ago). Each whale tail has a board beside it featuring a Whale Tale, stories about ships and their encounters with whales in the area over the years.
It was a beautiful still, sunny day and the bay was like a mill pond, the sea beyond the heads looked very calm too, so good news for whale watching. As the catamaran pulled into dock and the morning cruise passengers disembarked we heard the captain saying, 'that was the most whales we have ever seen on one trip!' We got on board with high hopes and the captain said, 'Hello everyone, it's like whale soup out there at the moment.'
Usually it takes a time for the crew to spot the first whale, they are in radio contact with the other two whale watch boats operating in the area and they let each other know when they have a sighting. No need this time, as soon as we were out of the heads they pointed out a group of three whales playing around and seemingly in no hurry to press on with the thousands of kilometres they need to travel. They treated us to a display of spy hopping (sticking their heads out of the water and looking around), tail waving, fin flapping, one even seemed to pop his head up and smile at us then, because the water was calm and quiet, the crew dropped a sound detector into the water and WE HEARD THEM! We couldn't believe our luck, last year when Ian and I went we saw a couple of whale's backs and thought we had a brilliant time but it was nothing like this.
Next the captain said he was taking us to where he thought he could catch some whales jumping out of the water because they tend to do it at 4 o'clock (?) I had heard that the experts do not even really know why they jump but goodness only knows how they can tell it is 4 o'clock. Anyway, he steered the catamaran to the likely spot and, yes you have guessed it, one jumped right beside us. Needless to say I didn't catch it with my camera, just a bit of a splash at the end so you will have to take my word for it.

I flew down to Melbourne last Friday morning because Zoe and I had tickets to see Culture Club at the Rod Laver arena (they were fantastic but enough about that). The journey is very cheap and straightforward as we only live 15 minutes from Newcastle Airport and I was in Melbourne before 10am with my own tour guide (Zoe) to show me around.
We started off by visiting Monash University, where Zoe is now studying and I was struck by how similar it is to the University of East Anglia where she got her degree in England.
Next stop was the beautiful Shrine of Remembrance. It is a very impressive structure in the middle of parkland with a museum in the basement and the building has been constructed so that on the 11th November at 11am the sun shines through a tiny skylight directly on to the memorial plaque in the centre of the room. The whole place is surrounded by art spaces sunk into the ground and trees planted to commemorate battles of the first and second world wars.
We then wandered through Treasury Gardens and Fitzroy Gardens, which are both beautiful and have plenty of plants in flower even though it is now the middle of winter. Fitzroy Gardens has a gorgeous conservatory full of tropical and semi tropical plants and is also home to Captain Cook's cottage. Zoe and Ian have had many discussions about this as Captain Cook never lived in Australia but, when we visited it we realised the cottage had been exported from England and reassembled in Fitzroy Gardens so we bought Ian a stubby holder from the souvenir shop to prove it did exist.
It is really easy to get around in Melbourne as the trams are straightforward and the city centre is built on a grid system so I didn't even get lost when I ventured in by myself on day two while Zoe was at work. She joined me at lunchtime and we took in Prahran Market which has loads of unusual food stalls including a mussel wagon and a home made Turkish delight stall where there were stacks of Turkish delight in every colour imaginable.
It was the Queen's Birthday weekend, Australians get the day off on the Monday as a public holiday and I just had to share this poster in one of the pub windows. Everywhere was quite jolly with an atmosphere only achieved when everyone knows they don't have to go to work on Monday. We took in St. Kilda, a really vibrant beachside suburb very near to Zoe and Shaun's home which is the home of Melbourne's Luna Park and where we walked along the pier and spotted fairy penguins hidden amongst the rocks. We walked along the banks of the Yarra river in the city past endless restaurants, cafes and bars wondering why we kept passing the occasional Batman or Transformer until we reached the convention centre and saw that Comic Con was being hosted there and we were surrounded by people dressed as comic characters.
With very sore feet from all that walking, we set off for the airport for our flight back to Newcastle airport as Zoe was coming back to spend a week in Lemon Tree Passage with us.

On our last day in Ballina we decided to cycle to a nearby (or so we thought) beach where dogs were allowed as Monty could not go on the beach at the site. We have always wondered just how far our electric bike batteries would go and we very nearly found out. We thought it was only down the road so popped Monty in his trailer and set off. We seemed to cycle for hours alongside the Richmond River passing the tiny little post office and not much else. When we finally arrived we realised we had cycled 18km in the baking sun and had to do the same to get back, when we finally limped back into the caravan site we didn't have a bar of battery life left on our displays between us!   
Next morning we packed up and drove south for around three and a half hours until we reached our next destination the beautiful Grassy Head Hideaway. We were staying here for a couple of nights as it is pretty much halfway home. It is a glorious place to stay, there are three villas set in gorgeous tropical gardens with a pool and balconies in the tree tops. The Hideaway is also in the middle of a great spot for day trips out. 
We started with Stuart's Point which is quite unusual in that the beach is reached by a long walk across a bridge over a waterway. It was a very pleasant little town with pretty parkland stretching the length of the waterfront and a caravan park. 
Next stop was South West Rocks which is a beautiful town, much bigger than Grassy Head or Stuart's Point and is made up of two bays, Trial Bay (named after a wrecked ship) and Horseshoe Bay. There are plenty of shops and cafes there and, at the time of our visit, a vintage caravan muster was taking place. The caravans were fantastic, lovingly restored and towed by cars of the same period driven by owners wearing clothes of a similar vintage to complete the look.
Nearby was Smoky Cape with its wonderful lighthouse which operates a small guest house. My sister Gill stayed there a number of years ago and says it was glorious to sit having breakfast watching dolphins frolicking around the rocks below.
The last stop before our journey home was Hat Head, as we drove there we passed field after field of cows each with their own group of attendant egrets. I have heard people raving about Hat Head but I was not so keen. Again a caravan site seemed to have control of all of the waterfront and had put lots of rules in place which I found a bit tedious. It is a very small town indeed and the general store was the usual mix of petrol station, grocery store, ironmongers, chemist, cafe and take away restaurant.
On the way home we took a quick detour via Taree to see the Big Oyster, it is now home to a car dealership but a pretty good Big Thing all the same.

Back on the Pacific Highway we headed up to Coolangatta, which is the home of the Gold Coast airport, to meet Zoe. The town of Coolangatta is very pleasant, quite smart with plenty of beachfront cafes and bars, but the interesting bit for us was Boundary Road where one side of the street in in New South Wales and the other in Queensland. There is a time difference too so one side of the street is an hour ahead of the other (NSW residents will tell you the time difference is more like 50 years). The views from the lookout in Coolangatta are fabulous, one way the full extent of Byron Bay can be seen and, in the other direction, Surfers Paradise.
What can I say about Surfers Paradise? It is truly ghastly, sort of a hideous cross between a seaside resort, Las Vegas and London Docklands. There are just hundreds of high rise hotels and apartment blocks, each one taller than the next and as a result of an ironic town planning mistake, these massive buildings keep the afternoon sun off the beach so it is a bit dark and gloomy surfing there later in the day. It also appears quite soul less, there are no people to be seen walking around or having coffee and ice creams, they must all either be surfing or in their air conditioned apartments and hotel rooms. It is the place for hen and stag (or buck's as they are called here) weekends which is why Zoe was headed this way so we collected her from the airport and went exploring.
We started with Byron Bay, I had been looking forward to going there and it lived up to my expectations. It is the go to place for young backpackers and is very crowded but still retains its charm. The town is dominated by shops, bars and cafes but they are pretty much all independent and mostly a bit cosmic, plenty of locals and visitors wearing tie dye and plaiting their own shoes but it is still a great place to visit. The bay itself is sensational, made up of two huge crescent shaped beaches but they are the most crowded beaches I have seen so far in Australia, and that includes Bondi. The whole area is topped by a magnificent white lighthouse which is a bit expensive to visit but we could not go in anyway as they did not allow dogs. 
We carried on along the tourist drive through Lennox Head and Brunswick Heads, both beautiful and worth another visit, and on through Moo moo where all the power poles and the garage were painted in cow print. Moo moo also had a Big Thing - the Big Motorbike, which was pretty good, not quite up there with the Big Prawn but better than many of the others.
This time we drove right through the middle of Surfers Paradise to drop Zoe at her destination - it didn't get any better!

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!

The Rabbitts hit the road again last week, this time travelling North. Zoe was due to attend a hen weekend on the Gold Coast and wanted to see Ian to celebrate his recent birthday, so she flew up a day early and we took a short holiday in the same direction to meet up with her. Although I have visited Queensland before, I have not been further than two hours north of our home by road so far so this was to be a new experience.
We headed off up the Pacific Highway, which is the main motorway up the east coast. It used to be one or two lanes all the way and pass through town after town, which must have been really unpleasant for the residents as so many trucks use this route. It apparently took an age to get through the endless bottlenecks, but there is a huge construction project underway to upgrade it and to bypass the towns, some of which are now dying because of lack of passing business, while others are flourishing as they are more desirable places to live.
After about four hours we reached Coffs Harbour where we had booked an overnight stop at The Clog Barn. We chose this site as a bit of a laugh because it is right on the Pacific Highway and everyone who travels this road sniggers about it. The signs boast that they have the world's only clog shaped swimming pool and everything is Dutch themed, so we went in expecting the ridiculous. Well, it was delightful! Our pitch was on a riverbank and the cafe had a beautiful balcony overhanging the river where guests could enjoy breakfast, the facilities were excellent and the owners friendly and helpful. Admittedly there was the clog shaped pool and the kiddie pool had a giant clog above it which squirted out water but the children staying there loved it. 
There was also a gift shop, where they made their own souvenir clogs, and a charming model village that has been built entirely by the owners and is filled with replicas of Dutch buildings and a railway where the train is, yes you've guessed it, clog shaped!
Coffs Harbour is also home to the first Big Thing, the Big Banana. This stretch of the coast is banana growing country and there are banana plantations all around. However, the Big Banana is one of the slightly disappointing Big Things. They have made the most of it though, and now there is a huge Big Banana fun park surrounding the original tourist attraction.
Coffs Harbour is a very dog friendly town too with a dog park and, off leash dog beaches. All in all we wished we were staying a bit longer and will definitely go back again.

A couple of days after my last post about the Royal Easter Show, this delightful picture turned up in the newspaper showing a horse appearing at the show who had never seen rain before. The article did not specify where he was from but, even in New South Wales there are towns which see very little rain, like Tibooburra or Menindee, and in parts of the outback years can go by without any significant rainfall.
We have not ventured far afield this week but there has been plenty going on in our little township to keep us interested. First a 65ft prawn trawler sank in the bay, it was moored at the marina and was discovered one morning half underwater. The, already overworked, volunteers of the Rural Fire Service were called in to help and the hazardous chemical people came and set up a boom around the boat to stop diesel leaking out into the water. The area is home to several oyster farms as well as being a prime fishing area so luckily that aspect was made safe quite quickly. Not so refloating the thing though. The local marine repair company tried and failed over several days to get the trawler upright again, even temporarily sinking one of their own barges in the attempt! It seems they did not have the necessary equipment and were wasting their time so a big rescue organisation were eventually called in and it is now floating again. It doesn't look too good though, I would have thought a few days underwater would not be too much trouble for a boat but apparently that is not the case.
Meanwhile the local council have invested in an upgrade of our foreshore which involves replacement of jetties around the boat ramp and a new ocean pool with shark/jellyfish nets to take the place of the, rather tatty, old one. The pool is very popular with the local kids, some of whom get off the school bus and jump straight in still wearing their school uniforms on hot days. The uniforms here are just shorts and polo shirts, not blazers and ties, so not the end of the world.

As the old pool disappeared, the children were still jumping in off the remaining bits then there were a grim few days when the whole area was fenced off as the digging for the poles took place and they could only look longingly from the beach. Finally, as the new pool went in, they were sploshing around in it before the workmen and women had finished putting the nets up.

 Later on we spotted a procession of children with fishing rods heading in the direction of the pool, the way it is built now means they can sit on the edge and fish on the outside of it.

Ian had a Big Birthday this week and one of his gifts was a new fishing rod so I expect he will soon be joining them.
On a happy note to finish, the fires at the Tilligerry Habitat do not seem to have put off the wildlife, the plants are already growing back and this kookaburra did not seem to mind at all that the tree he had chosen to sit in was burnt to a crisp.