During our time in Coffs Harbour we were staying with a family that we met during our trek in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We had kept in touch since with the occasional email, and when we let them know we were heading there way they were kind enough to give us a room for a few days.

We met Brett and Nydean at the bus stop after a 4 hour journey, with Amy still on a high as we had seen our first Kangaroo standing in a field as we drove past. We packed all our stuff in to the boot of the car, then went up to a viewpoint on the way back to the house, with some really nice views looking down on the harbour and the surrounding bays.

When we got back to the house we said hi to the 3 boys - Adrian, Blake and Hayden - then dumped our stuff in our room. Blake was the unlucky one that had to move out at our expense. We also met Lily, the King Charles Spaniel, who was great fun, and could chase a ball all day long without getting bored. To tire her out a bit we went for a short walk along to the beach with Brett, Blake and the dog. The area they live in is really nice and quiet, and only a 10 minute walk from the beach. I think the boys go surfing down there when the weather is a bit warmer. On the way back we saw a Kookaburra, but we still haven't heard one call.

When we got back Brett and Nydean asked if we would like to go looking for Kangaroos, as I think they had noticed Amy's excitement at seeing one earlier. We went out in the car to a nearby housing estate with Amy and I expecting to see one or two if we were lucky. When we got there we couldn't believe how many of them were just lounging around on people's front yards. We must have seen about 50 of them, and we even saw a couple getting into a scrap which was pretty funny.

In the evening we had tea, before watching a bit of the ashes on TV. We got to bed around 11pm happy that we weren't in a tent.

The next day we were up and about at 8ish, which we thought was far too early. The family were early risers with all of the kids up by 9am, even though they were on holiday. I'd like to see David do that on his holidays. Once we had eaten breakfast we headed down to the harbour and went for a walk on Muttonbird Island, which is a small peninsula where rare birds migrate to nest.

Afterwards we went down to the harbour front where Brett kept his canoes. Normally he is up at 5am to go for a paddle, but thankfully he let us wait until around midday before we had a go. Amy and Brett went our first whilst I stayed on the beach with Blake, then Brett came back and gave me the canoe to go out and catch up with Amy. I fell off after the first wave, then ended up sideways against each wave after that, trying my hardest not to flip again. Once I got a bit further out it was easier going, so we had a relaxing paddle around the harbour for a while.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the house, playing table tennis and playstation with the kids, then watched TV before everyone went to bed again. I was on my way to bed until I realised that the final day of the Open was on TV, with Westwood leading the way. I stayed up until 3:30am only to be disappointed.

Despite my lack of sleep we were up at 8:30 to go whale watching. There are plenty of Whales at this time of year moving up the coast to breed, and the boats go out everyday to follow them. The first whales we saw were a mother and young calf, but we had to let them move on as it's illegal to get to close to the young. We spent around 2 hours out on the boat and saw several whales right up close. They're huge!

Once we got back on dry land we had a wander in to town along the mangrove boardwalk, then had a quick scout around the shops before Nydean picked us up.

By the next day we were just about getting used to the early starts. Brett was back at work, but Nydean was kind enough to take us on a drive out to a nearby national park, where we got some good views of the surrounding hills all the way back to the coast.

We had a walk through the rainforest canopy on a raised boardwalk, but it was too thick to see any wildlife, even though we could hear plenty. We stopped at the local cafe for a quick coffee and cake before the drive back. We spent the evening playing the kids at table tennis and playstation again, before packing our stuff up to move on the next day.

We weren't due to leave Coffs on the bus until 2pm, so we decided to spend the morning at the Pet Porpoise Pool. We left all of our bags at Brett's work before driving down there, and we spent a good two or three hours looking around, even though the place was quite small. We looked through a few of the enclosures, including Emu's and Turtles, before watching some of the Seal and Dolphin shows, which were really impressive. We queued up to get our pictures taken with a seal and a dolphin, then watched a live reptile show before walking back in to town.

On the way in to town we were walking along a path through the woods, when Amy spotted a Kuala on the floor about 20m in front of us. We sneaked up to it expecting it to run away, but it just wandered off through the woods and up the nearest tree. We though it was amazing, so we spent about 10 minutes watching it before carrying on into town.

We had a quick lunch in town before wandering over to Brett's office to pick up our stuff. We said our thankyous then lugged our stuff around the corner to get the bus, happy with the amount we had crammed in over the last few days.