10. Yamba, Coffs Harbour and Coramba

Stayed: Coramba

Coramba Reserve - $15/night

Coffs Harbour is so not what I remember. It is still beautiful but much bigger than I thought.

We arrived and bought the cat a walking lead. Then headed for the big banana!

The big banana is over rated. Very expensive so we took our tourist photos, browsed the gift shop and walked around. There was a bromeliad shop, puppet shop and the candy shop; where we saw them making lollies and of course got to sample some of the freshly made lollies!

We left and headed for the beach and parked the car near the SLSC. We all had a swim in the water, even me! It was lovely however I didn’t go in as far as the boys did. They enjoyed boy surfing and jumping through the waves, there was hardly anyone there.

We left the beach and headed for a park to have some lunch at and ended up down near the marina. After having lunch we decided to go for the walk along the water’s edge and up Muttonbird Island – yep in the middle of the day.

The kids “didn’t feel like” going up the top of the island, so they stayed down the bottom while Rod and I went ahead. Yep, it was not good. Straight up, across the top and down the other side, in the middle of the day. I made it, was very proud of myself and the views were amazing. You could see out to sea for miles, out to Solitary Island and over to the rockwall with colour cement slabs on it, not to mention all of Coffs Harbour and the mountains. It was beautiful.

We left Muttonbird Island and headed for Coramba – a town 15km west of Coffs Harbour, up the hill, where our caravan struts were getting fixed.

Poor old Patty (our Patrol) struggled getting up the big hill and to start with we thought we were sent on a wild goose chase. We found the RV man and he confirmed the struts had failed.

We left the RV man’s house and headed for the Orara Reserve Football Club in Coramba. It was fantastic. Other than one other lady and the caretaker, we were it! A massive bathroom and shower, green grass, footy field, off the road, a nature reserve right there and power - $15/night! Good night.

The next day we opted to stay at Coramba again so we left the caravan at the reserve and headed down the hill to Coffs Harbour.

We went to the shops as I was in desperate need of togs and the boys wanted a boogie board. So we bought both and headed back to the beach. Although today the water was a little chillier, in we went. The boys had a ball playing on their boogie boards, really nice to see them get along and play like mates.

From here we headed over to near the jetty and parked up for lunch. We then headed for the end of the rockwall and had a fish, where we caught nothing but heard there was a big storm coming so we headed to the shops to grab some groceries and headed back up the hill. No storm came just a little rain.

The next morning we did the small nature reserve walk at Orara Reserve. It was very dense and a little muddy, but lovely. There was a creek in full run at the end of the path. We went a dropped the caravan off to the RV man and went for a wander “downtown”. Well to the one shop and the closed pottery place. We did find homemade pickles, fresh bread and a yummy apple and sultana Danish J.

We returned to get our van however there were complications – always complications. The strut s were proving to be difficult to fit, but finally the fellas got them on. BUT THEN, the roof wouldn’t line up! So fiddling around and moving brackets we were off, a couple hours behind schedule!

Photos: Yamba, Coffs Harbour and Coramba