We love koalas and surfing!

After Port Stephens we made our way further north to another little town, Port Macquarie. We stumbled upon a BBQ and Blues festival, as well as a weekend market there. We did a little shopping and managed to find the world's most annoying bongo player at the markets. She was a flighty lady sitting there all day trying to teach people to drum, but all she would tell them is to find their own rhythm. With teaching points like that, you can imagine how skilled she was. We had lunch at the BBQ and Blues festival, which was basically a BBQ-off. There were loads of teams all selling their food and judges taste testing it all. We decided to try 2 different pulled pork sandwiches to do our own little taste test. The one I bought was definitely the winner! I had to wait in line a little longer, but it was so yummy...and Dave's was terrible! There was barely any sauce on it and the pork was dry and kind of tasteless. I can't imagine his team won any prizes!

After lunch we made our way to the local Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie. This was one of the main reasons I wanted to stop here. They do free tours of the hospital every day at 3pm. They take you around to visit all of the koalas outside in the yard while they are feeding and interacting with them all. They are so cute! And it was interesting to learn why the koalas were there. Some were car accidents, or falls from trees. Some were there because of amputations, or kyphosis/scoliosis (which makes it hard for them to climb trees and fend for themselves), but most were apparently there because of Chlamydia. They call this wet-bottom, because it makes them incontinent and the fur on their bottoms get all infected and they get really sick. Their main goal is to rehabilitate the koalas and then release them back into the wild, but only if they believe they will thrive. Some of the koalas end up living at the hospital because they could not make it on their own, like Barry. He was my favourite. Barry has a pretty bad case of kypho-scoliosis that makes it nearly impossible for him to climb trees anymore. So the hospital is now his home and he is now pretty much their mascot. They even sell little stuffed Barry's that they ask people to buy as a fundraiser for the hospital. They run a monthly photo contest where they get people to take photos of their "Barry's" in different situations/countries. You send in the photos and there is some sort of prize. Some of the pictures they had on display were hilarious...Barry in Malaysia...Barry at a wedding...Barry surfing, etc.

This is Barry!

 

The next day we made our way further north to check out a few more places. We stopped in Hat Head National Park, where we sat on the beach for a little bit. Then we walked through the little town to try and find a body board that Dave could use on the beach. It was unsuccessful but we would keep looking! Then we made our way to a town called Southwest Rocks, where we spent the rest of the day. We did a walk up to a light house there. We also went to the beach and watched some more the amazing surfers that Australia has to offer. We managed to find a body board here so Dave bought it and was eager to give it a try. He quickly learned that it is much more fun if you have fins to help you catch waves, and he would rather learn to surf than body board. Lucky for him we were on our way to surf camp in a couple of days!

We had signed ourselves up for a 2 days surf and stay camp in a little town called Arrawarra Heads. It was a hilarious place to spend a few days. It was basically like summer camp for 18-25 year olds. Most people thought we were 25-26 so we somehow managed to fool them all and fit in. But surf camp consisted of a 2 hour lesson per day, as well as cheap surf board rentals any time you weren't in a lesson. Our first lesson went really well. They teach you how to get up on broken, or white, waves and you spent about and hour in the water just trying to hit wave after wave. We had so much fun that we rented boards that afternoon and decided to head back out on our own for another couple of hours. We both were totally exhausted after this, but felt like we were making some progress. That night we played some games and met some really nice people. Our roommates were Alex and Ewan from England and we also managed to find sisters Zoe and Fran, also from England. The four of them were really nice and we got along really well with them.

Our second day at surf camp started with our lesson. This lesson was awesome! We had an amazing instructor who challenged both Dave and I (he called us his Canadian superstars...hahah) and had us on some green, or unbroken, waves. Dave even rode this amazing wave that made him look like he knew what he was doing! He was definitely obsessed with surfing by the end of surf camp! We spent a little more time with Alex, Ewan, Fran and Zoe and then unfortunately our time was up and we had to be on our way.

Surf as far as the eyes can see

Thanks for reading

xo