We've been and gone and come home again

We started in the mountains, this pic was taken just outside Dorrigo. The folk festival we attended was held in the town.

Then we went to the coast, here is Pilot Beach. As you can see, not every day was sunny.
In Port Macquarie we shared our camp site with the local wildlife.
Because it is spring the flowers were blooming everywhere we went, there were native plants like these pretty grevilleas........
..........and introduced species, like these gorgeous jacarandas in Grafton a week before their annual Jacaranda Festival.
We had a lovely time, saw many interesting things, and visited lots of places we had never been to before (and some we had, although it was a long long time ago), so you can expect to see more pics yet. While the beaches are lovely the coastal towns are rapidly spreading as more and more development takes place, so for me the truly luscious part of the country is a little way inland with its green rolling hills and smaller villages and towns.

The local wildlife was entertaining. The caravan park where we stayed in Port Macquarie had a family of Tawny Frogmouths nesting in a tree, and there were many other birds and some large lizards scurrying around. It is also home to a population of koalas, a favourite tree for the koalas' evening meal of eucalyptus leaves was near our caravan. Neither of us had heard koalas before; the noise they make sounds like a grumbly old man trying to start a reluctant lawnmower. The sound of it carries quite a long way.

Did you know that koalas and wombats are related? They share a common ancestor (although it was something like 32 million years ago), but koalas took to climbing trees and wombats started digging holes in the ground.

"Accepting hospitality a sign of good-will.

As eating with another under his own roof is in all conditions of society regarded as a sign of good-will, those who partake of proffered hospitalities, only to gossip about and abuse their host and hostess, should remember, that in the opinion of all honorable persons, they injure themselves by so doing."

I won't abuse our koala friends as we did eat under their roof - at least, in the shade of their favourite tree. But just the same, sometimes they were very noisy.

Enjoy your days!