Hey everyone

Today was Koala Hospital day!

We were up early and out of the Newcastle YHA, ready to catch the Greyhound north up the coast to Port Macquarie. We'd enjoyed our stay in Newcastle, it had been a welcomed change from Sydney, but we also thought we had seen all it had to offer and it was time to move on.

The coach journey took a couple of hours, but we've found that even if the coach journey apparently takes 2 hours, sometimes half an hour of that is just spent at a service station (where we try really hard not to buy snacks).

We arrived in Port Macquarie just after lunch, and after checking into our hostel it was straight to the Koala Hospital! It was a long walk but we made it just in time for the free guided tour. As Christina got excited at every koala she saw, we learnt all about the hospital and its 'patients'.

After the tour we bought a couple of pens from the gift shop, to do our bit in keeping the hospital going (the staff all volunteer and just donations keep it going). Beside the Koala Hospital was the Roto House, which was the Flynn's family home. It's a late victorian house and what makes it special is that it's as if they went out for lunch 100 years ago and never came back (at least that's how the hostel owner described it). On a side note, it made Christina want a verandah on her future house.

We then had a very late lunch on a nice spot overlooking a rocky beach. Our next stop was the national park in the centre of the town. We'd heard it was a really nice walk so we wanted to fit it in our tight schedule, and because the sun was setting, we had to be quick. We first went along a boardwalk through the mangroves, and then continued the walk around a lake, all the time trying to spot wild koalas. We were drawing to the end of our walk, with the sun beginning to set, when we heard strange squarks from high up in the trees around us. We looked up and were met by the sight of hundreds and hundreds of bats hanging up in the trees. After a few expletives, we hurried our pace (practically to a run) and were glad when we made it out of the trees.

It was strange how we stepped out of the park and were instantly back in the middle of the town, with a supermarket in front of us. You would never have guessed that there was a bat-infested wood just the otherside of the road... Or at least not until we came out of the supermarket and we were met by the sight of hundreds of bats racing across the dark sky. We were just really thankful that we weren't in the park when they took off.

Back at the hostel, there was another incident involving christina and some spaghetti (you may remember the last incident). We only had one night at the hostel, and we were pretty glad about that as the room was small and damp, and the mattresses were particularly bad (even by hostel standards). Tomorrow, our adventure would continue, as we would go to Coffs Harbour... Xxx