Tuesday 13th
August

Wild Koala hunting
...again

After last
nights exciting X Factor – Keep going Georgie ....we still managed to get up for
a nice early start this morning to drive the next stage of our journey back
down South towards Sydney. Today we took a fairly leisurely drive stopping off
at the lovely Port Macquarie- loads of lovely blue sea, sand and surf (obviously
just the sea was blue). The shops were pretty good, and the place was spotlessly
clean.

We got
chance to walk on the beach and John even dipped his toes in the surf. After a
walk through the rainforest we drove around the coast road in search of Wild
Koalas. In all searches so far little
Ozzie has has proved very elusive. Today
proved no different – despite loads of gum trees, going to the areas listed in
the footprints guide as being a good bet, and doing extra scanning when we saw
a “watch out for koalas” road sign they were still in hiding. We did try
finding the Bird Tree as its apparently
the biggest tree in NSW by volume – shouldn’t be difficult to miss we thought –
but we had to cop out of the hunt when it turned out to be a gravel track that really needed a four by
four rather than a bog standard Holden Barina. I did point out to John that the
map said track for four wheel drives and
we had four wheels but he didn’t seem to think that’s what it meant. Despite
missing out on our Koalas today We still had a good day, saw some great
scenery, spotted a few more pelicans and finished up safely at Taree.