The Pettifer's Down Under: Angourie

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Angourie

Seal Rocks

We're back from our holiday, and very good it's been too. We set off on Saturday evening after the conclusion of Andrew's first cricket match for Collaroy Plateau (he's playing in the adult games as well as coaching the under 12s) and drove up as far as a place called Karuah - which was just North of Newcastle. It took about 2.5 hours and was largely in the dark, so nothing really to tell about that, except that there was very little traffic and that aptly we passed through Hexham on the way! Karuah is just off the Pacific Highway - a road that runs from Sydney up to the top of the country going North. It had clearly once been on the highway and had recently had a bypass built, which seemed to have pretty much killed the place off, as it was a bit of a ghost town. We did, however, get a very good meal in the local RSL which was just up the road. We were all in good spirits - our first proper Aussie holiday!

Given that the Pacific Highway is the most important road route up the coast, we were surprised to find that it is largely a single lane each way, with the odd section of dual carriageway. For this reason, probably, it has a reputation for being the most dangerous road in Australia, and a number of people warned us to be careful on it. In the event, although we were not complacent, there was not much traffic and we made good time on each stretch of the journey, and saw some wonderful scenery.

The second part of the journey went from Karuah to Wauchope (not sure how you pronounce that one!) and we took a couple of scenic detours. The first was to have a look at Seal Rock - which was reached down an unsealed road - which didn't disappoint with a beautiful beach and a very well placed campsite at the back which we plan to visit some time soon. Confusingly, there were no seals. I'm not even sure that they have seals in Australia to be honest. After Seal Rock, we continued on to Forster and Tuncurry which were both lovely as well and worth a proper visit. After a bit of time on the highway again, we decided to follow a signposted 'tourist route' which would take us off the main road and into the interesting countryside to the west of us and to Wauchope itself. This turned out to be far more of an adventure that we had expected....the route took us for miles on unsealed roads in the middle of nowhere round the edges of mountains! We had to stop the car and get the manual out to find out how to switch on the 4 wheel drive, and we certainly saw parts of the country we would not otherwise have seen. Some of the scenery in the valleys looked not unlike England - rolling hills and trees, and very green - with not much sign of the drought. We were relieved to arrive at our motel for the night, and Anna got straight in the pool while George and Andrew went off for a game of tennis.

A lizard we passed on the road on one of our scenic detours

Kangaroo! On a playing field!

Next morning we got up bright and early and made straight for the Angourie Rain Forest Resort where we would be spending the rest of the week. This was the longest part of the drive, and we could see that beyond Coffs Harbour things got noticeably more tropical. We passed the Big Banana (the Australians like to build big stuff by the side of roads. Don't know why) which wasn't as big as we had expected (tragic to be disappointed by a big plastic banana but there you go), and saw the banana plantations by the side of the road. We saw beautiful bright purple jacaranda trees, and loads of kangaroos. The kangaroos were a bit unexpected as poor old Bill Bryson in his book reports travelling all over Australia and only ever seeing one (although when I mentioned this to an Aussie friend here she said 'he must have had his bloody eyes closed'). Because we had all read 'Down Under' we were actually initially impressed at having seen a couple of dead roos by the edge of the road, so you can imagine the excitement when we started seeing fields of them jumping about and very much alive!

Angourie is a tiny village where the Clarence River meets the Pacific Ocean, and is surrounded by rainforest. It was flatter than I had expected but probably only because Sydney is so very hilly that we've got used to it. The actual coastline reminded me a little of western France, in that the beaches were wide and backed by sand dunes with fantastic surf. It was just down the road from the bigger village of Yamba - famous for its prawns - and also a funny little town called Maclean, which is so proud of its Scottish heritage that it has all the different family tartans painted on its telegraph poles. In many ways, the area reminded me of Milford on Sea. There was clearly a very high elderly population and very little for any local young people to do either for leisure (except surf of course) or for work, as although this is a tourist area it is very under developed. The beaches were pretty much deserted.

The Blue Pool swimming hole at Angourie

Nope - definitely can't see the Isle of Wight...

The resort was lovely - we met some nice people, the kids made friends, and enjoyed the pool and the games room and the tennis. I enjoyed going to the spa! But apart from all that we spent time exploring the local beaches and swimming holes (created by natural springs when they tried quarrying in the area). Highlights would have to be seeing a humpback whale breaching just off the beach at Angourie, and a pod of dolphins at Iluka. We also greatly enjoyed a 5km walk through the rainforest, although the size of the ants we saw was truly horrifying!

Rainforest walk at Iluka

Sea Eagle at Iluka

Iluka Beach

I will skim over the fact that it rained rather a lot (it is the tropics after all and you can't expect there not to be rain in the rainforest!).....it was always hot anyway! We drove the full 8 hours home without incident and it was all over too soon. Now we are fully into the swing of washing and ironing and getting the children ready to go back to school. Enjoy the photos and the video!