Thursday, 9/20

Falls for lunch

    After chook and sheep feeding duties we left the farm to drive to Iluka, on the coast. Along the way we visited Woolombi Falls and had lunch at Ebor falls.

Woolombi Falls 

A little bird called a Superb Fairy Wren

Ebor Falls...We promise not to jump, Kim

          Most of the drive between Armidale and Grafton was on hilly curving roads where almost no one lived. I'm beginning to notice that about Australia. Even though we've been in the relatively populated state of New South Wales, in a country the size of the lower 48 states and with 1/15 of the population, it just isn't very crowded. There aren't any parts of Ohio that are as sparsely populated as the non-coastal areas of NSW.

It's no Iceland, mind you, but the roads and countryside are rather lonesome.

Along the way we passed what Kim estimates may be the ugliest house in the world.

Ugliest house in the world?  You decide.

Cedar Point in NSW

    Once we hit Grafton we were out of the Great Dividing Range and on to flat land, and Kim had to slow down to the posted 80 k/h (about 50 mph). I suppose if you grew up driving the roads in the Great Dividing Range, or West Virginia, at 65 mph around hair pin turns with no shoulder, no guard rails, precipitous drops and the possibility of roos or deer at any point, the drive would have seemed normal, but for us it was a bit of an amusement park ride. Kim had told Jake that she could be home from Iluka in 3 ½ hours if he needed her, or in 3 hours if we weren't along. However, Kim is a good driver and she got us to and from the coast with no problems.

     The primary form of agriculture in the coastal areas near Grafton is sugar cane, and we saw vast fields of the giant grass at different stages of growth.

We've gone batty for flying foxes

     We got to the condo near sunset. It doesn't sit directly on the ocean, but faces the Clarence River about a mile from where it joins the Pacific. We were able to get a glass of wine and sit on the terrace overlooking the water just as the sun set. Soon after, flying foxes flew over us, returning from a day of eating fruit on the uninhabited rainforest island across the river to nest in the mangrove swamp to the east.