Shelley Beach
We saw the Sea Acres sign, so turned down the roadway leading to the east off the coastal drive.
The road is narrow, and plunges steeply towards the ocean. It is fringed on each side with rainforest, which is protected in many places by a boardwalk - too close to the ground to be of a great deal of interest to anyone and his baby, blanket or no, unless they happened to be particularly slim.
So it was a surprise to us when this is what we saw at the end of the road. Not rainforest, but Shelley Beach.
Although the drive is typical of the entrance to an ecotourism area, it is just the way down to a quiet but attractive public beach. Certainly a nice place to spend a little time.
Sea Acres - second attempt
"We hear that often," said the woman in the Sea Acres shop when we told her about our unplanned trip to Shelley Beach. This was not to be the last time we were to hear that the local councils do not have a good reputation for clear signposting.
I handed over my $8.00 adult entry fee and was surprised to discover that it also included a guided tour if I wanted it.
As the walk takes about 1/2 hour, I thought this was remarkably good value, so I decided to take up the offer. Chris didn't feel up to the walk, so she remained in the visitor centre and cafeteria.
The lady who was to lead the tour asked if anyone else in the centre was looking for a guide, and was told that a Dutch couple at that time watching a rainforest display might also be interested, however they wished to view the entire presentation and then walk through the rainforest at their own pace.
So I had a guide all to myself. The walk is all on an elevated walkway weaving between the trees.
Conditions in the forest were mostly not suitable for photography. I could have taken photographs in the relatively low light conditions, but what the photographs showed would have been unclear anyway.
The first thing she showed me was a pepper vine. Local Aborigines used both the dried berries and the milder-flavoured leaves as condiments. This vine is apparently similar to one native to parts of Asia.
Later we passed various palms. One was the low-growing, so-called Walking Stick Palm. Having a slender stem, rarely growing more than about 10mm in diameter, they made excellent walking sticks. The roots grow from a bulb just below ground, so the entire palm would be dug up, the roots were cut off and the bulb was trimmed to form a hand hold. The stem was then just cut to length.
After the Boer War and World War I, there were so many soldiers requiring walking sticks, that this palm came close to extinction in its usual range along the eastern coast of northern NSW and Queensland.
Other palms in the area are Cabbage Tree Palms (the pith in the trunk tastes something like cabbage, and fibre from the fronds was woven to make cabbage tree hats in the early days of the colony) and Bangalow Palms, which were used as a source of fibre and liquid carriers made from the curved ends of the fronds.
The photograph below shows some of the local palms.
We also saw many native figs of different kinds including the Strangler Fig, which grows around an existing tree. It was once believed that this fig actually kills the "host" tree, but this is not so. It actually just outlives most host trees. However, it also competes for nutrients with the host tree so only those with particularly aggressive root systems survive long anyway.
A Strangler Fig wrapped around a tree is shown in the next photograph.
Some other interesting plants were a native ginger, and a very hard timber known as the Python tree, which is always cool by comparison with surrounding trees.
Of course, there were other familiar trees and shrubs as well as some less-well-known varieties. Among the interesting ones was a kind of very primitive pine with palm-like leaves rather than the needles familiar to us all, and having the seed on the outside of the fruit.
Chris and I had lunch at the visitor centre before moving on.
Koala hospital
Our next stop was the Port Macquarie koala hospital, where injured or ill koalas are treated. Some older ones or particularly seriously injured ones are kept there permanently.
Here are a few photos.
Observatory
On Wednesday night the local observatory, just across the road from our unit, was open to visitors. I went across and viewed Saturn through the telescope and watched a fairly interesting astronomical display based on the Stellarium software.
The observatory is run by a community group and has a reflector telescope of around 250 - 300mm diameter.
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