April 29 - May 2 The Rest of Coffs

Moonee Creek Beach

So over the next days we had some rain through to torrential and continuous downpours with added thunderstorms and strong winds – delightful.  One moderate rainy day we did a tour of the northern beaches and at one it even stopped raining giving us enough time for an explore.  We were rewarded with the best cache of river eroded skipping stones ever.  AWESOME!

Coffs Harbour Butterfly House

We also went to the Coffs Harbour Butterfly House (one of only 3 in Australia) during a couple of sensational thunderstorms.  The storms really encouraged us to take our time watching and learning more about butterflies than, well ever.  The combination of going on a weekday and the rain meant that there were not many people there.  The boys had one of the butterfly attendants to answer all their questions.  She was an excellent source of information and showed the boys a range of chrysalises (butterflies have chrysalis, moths cocoons) and explained the full life cycle of butterflies.  We were able to take some really good pictures, have our sandwiches and learn about a range of other insects there as well, all while staying dry through some amazing storms and deluging rains.

Good thing the boys have been watching plenty of David Attenborough.

Yep this butterfly is actually laying its eggs.

 

 Storms, rain, wind and the big wet

This is the path we took to Muttonbird Island only a couple of days earlier

And the storms – well we saw more rain that you get for half a year or more in Canberra.  We couldn’t get great pictures as we didn’t want to ruin our cameras.  The day after the storms we emerged and walked along the local beaches and look outs.  The waves were crashing over the breakwater we had walked over to Muttonbird Island, the normally quiet creeks around Coffs were torrents, the beaches covered in sticks and logs, and the sea water was a delightful shade of, well, mud.

Whilst we had found Coffs a bit difficult in the wet (we had a mound of wet towels and clothes ready for a good wash and dry), we had total sympathy for the intrepid athletes who had to compete in the world touch football cup through all those deluges.  We tried to look at a couple of the matches from the road – we couldn’t see them even though they were only 20 or 30 metres away.  It was such a shame for Coffs to have this world class sporting event in probably their worst weather of the year.