Tacking Point Lighthouse
A deer crossing sign is one I don’t see very often in Australia. This one seems to be meandering across the road, while the ones on the signs in America are generally leaping across. :) The only place I remember seeing any deer in Australia was in Halls Gap in the Grampians. You certainly don’t see them often here, so seeing a sign for them is interesting to me and is one to add to my collection of roadsigns. 
While we were in the Port Macquarie area we made the visit to the Tacking Point Lighthouse. A storm was brewing and we were lucky to find a parking spot, with only a small roundabout with some parking in it. Just next to it Lighthouse Beach (such a creative name!). It looks beautiful with those rough waves coming in and the dark, stormy sky. 
It was Matthew Flinders that mapped the coast in this area and ‘tacked’ off this point, thus the name. 
This lighthouse has been classified by the National Trust. I’m not sure what that means, but I did find this marker. (There seem to be different organisations for classifying various sites.) 
This is such a cute little lighthouse. So well kept. It was built in 1879. There were heaps of people there despite the storm but with a little patience I managed to get some pictures without anyone in them. I love this first one with the stormy sky in the background. We’re not trying to see all the lighthouses on the coast or anything, but if there’s one nearby that’s easy to get to then we make sure to have a look. Sometimes we find treasures like this one. 
Because of the storm coming in, the kids didn’t even get out of the car at this lighthouse. That’s okay, they don’t have to be interested in every lighthouse we see. They just have to play along for mama’s sake sometimes. :) We came here after we visited the Sea Acres Rainforest Centre, which is enough for one day. 
There’s a platform here perfect for whale watching. I did see someone with binoculars on the platform that day, but I don’t think they saw anything. We didn’t know it then, but whale spotting was in our near future. 
There’s that rough sea again. We didn’t last long after this picture since the rain started coming down and it got very windy. Hard to even see the mountains in the distance. Another lighthouse was not far in our future. 🙂
The Koala Hospital at Port Macquarie
Every afternoon at the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie they give a ‘Walk & Talk’ tour about the koalas while they are being fed. Sounded like the perfect time to visit so we headed there one afternoon during our stay in the area. In my head I was picturing some kind of indoor hospital with separate rooms and viewing windows. So wrong! All the koalas are outside in separate enclosures. The trees in each enclosure are carefully separated from any outside trees so that the wild koala population does not mix with the patients. Apparently that was an issue in the past, they told us the story of one wild koala that visited more than once and fathered a couple of babies! There are two of the koala statues from the Hello Koalas sculpture trail at the hospital, so of course we had to do some pictures when we got there. 
I read on the Hello Koalas website that these fibreglass koalas were all given extra coats of paint to protect them from the weather and from their loving public (it’s supposed to help in case of graffiti also). The signs say not to climb on the koalas, but cuddles are okay. Good thing, it would be hard to keep kids from touching them. 
One of the interesting things we learned about koalas is that they have two opposable thumbs on their front paws. See them on the statue? Good for climbing and hanging onto branches while they eat. The back paws have four toes and a clawless thumb. Two of the toes are partially fused together and make a great grooming claw. 
The koalas at the hospital are given vitamin supplements in a syringe. Don’t they look soooo cuddly? The staff are all volunteers except for the supervisor role. Someone has to be in charge, right? I remember reading you could start training to be a volunteer at fourteen, how fun would that be? 
We learned that Queensland koalas are leaner and have shorter fur than those in Victoria. They have a different shape because koalas up here don’t need to carry around that extra layer to insulate them from cold weather. There’s actually only one species of koala, so it’s interesting to see how their bodies adapt to the different climate. It’s thought that the name ‘koala’ comes from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘no drink’ since koalas rarely need to drink water. They get enough moisture from the gumtree leaves. 
There were three baby koalas, they were all way up in the trees. This one was the closest, the others were way up high! They weren’t being fed at the same time as the others so they had no reason to come down while we were there. The kids were entertained when the tour guide told us how mama koalas mix their poo in with their milk in order to introduce the toxins in gumtree leaves to their baby’s digestive system. Isn’t that a lovely idea? 
My very own koala. Okay, not really. But this picture was taken while we were there so it goes in this post. Because he’s cute and cuddly, like a koala. 🙂 
This one, named Westhaven Barry, had a severe case of scoliosis. The koalas are named for the area they came from along with the name of the person who found them. (You can see examples of other names on the hospital’s adoption page.) Makes for some interesting names! I’ve learned from their website that Barry has gone to the ‘Great Gumtree in the Sky’ since our visit. He’d been at the hospital since 2008 and had a penchant for escaping his yard to visit the others. 
Look at this one peaking out from behind the leaves. Gorgeous! There wasn’t a huge number of bears there when we visited. During mating season, when koalas are on the move, their population at the hospital is higher. According to their website they care for 200 to 250 a year. The hospital is a charitable organisation and relies heavily on donations. 
There was a viewing window where you could watch any procedures happening. There were also displays of skulls and such. I’m sure this giant, injured koala has featured in many pictures with many children. 🙂 
Admission and tours are free, but they do need donations to continue their work. We were very happy we visited. If we lived in the area I’d be signing my kids up as volunteers when they’re old enough!
Hello Koalas!
Port Macquarie has this great thing, a koala trail called Hello Koalas. There are about 50 fibreglass koalas, hand-painted by local artists, set up all over town and a trail map you can follow to find them all. What a great idea to get tourists visiting all over town in an attempt to see all of them. We weren’t the only ones headed around town with our camera snapping pictures of these cute and colourful koalas! The first one we saw was at the Sea Acres Rainforest Centre, which is an elevated rainforest walk. It was wonderful, even in the rain! It’s also where we picked up our koala trail guide map to help us find all the other koalas around town. 
These are the last four we saw, at a service centre by the motorway. They’re at the various fast food joints and the petrol station at the service centre. We caught them on our way out of town the day we left the Port Macquarie area. I loved the one on the top left. It’s called Oceania. 
We almost didn’t get this zebra one, called Koala Z. He’s at the local TAFE, which was closed on the day we went. He’s behind the gate and we couldn’t get close. A couple of days later we were driving through town and things suddenly looked familiar. Sure enough, we were close by and got the photo. The other three were at the Glasshouse, the local theatre in the CBD. I’m glad it was open when we went since we found three koalas inside! 
One of the days we went looking for koalas I only had two of the kids with me. Miracle of miracles! That lifesaver koala is Mack and he can be found at Macca’s. Go figure. The saucy lady in the bikini is Retro Rita. The last two were in clubs. As in gambling establishments/restaurants. For adults. Not really kid-friendly places. At least they were in the lobbies so we didn’t have to go too far in! 
The last one in this picture is a special koala that only comes out for town meetings and such. They have a few special koalas, they come out for sporting events and other community events. They are pictured on the trail guide but aren’t always available for public viewing. This one was at a golf course and was inside, we only just made it before it closed. We were lucky to meet the artist there. 
The first two in this picture were at the koala hospital. (Stay tuned for a blog post about the koala hospital, what a special place!) 
This first one has a beautiful view of the ocean! We couldn’t get close to the last two since they were behind gates at museums that had closed for the day. 
This one was at a caravan park. It’s not the park we stayed at but it is in the same town, Bonny HIlls, just south of Port Macquarie. The koala was gorgeous with beautiful sea creatures all over it. 
This one is my favourite. It’s called ‘I’m no bear’. Because koalas aren’t bears, but people often get that wrong. See him wearing a panda costume? Cute! 
There were several all in one area near the CBD Foreshore. We had a walk around to all of them and then treated the kids to some hot chips. See how well that whole tourism thing works? We wouldn’t have even been in the area otherwise. 
SkeeterBug’s favourite was The Cyclist. The others had so many favourites that I forget who liked which one! 
It cracks me up how JitterBug is in and out of these shots. He was so interested in seeing them all but really didn’t care one way or the other whether he was in the pictures. The other two needed photographic evidence that they were there! 
This was the view looking out at the water instead of the koalas. 😉 
We were enamoured with this pelican up on the light pole. Pelicans are rather large, but he managed to do some preening while he balanced up there. 
We purchased the colouring book so we could colour pictures of all our favourite koalas. The back cover even has pictures of all of the painted statues. 
The koala trail left me with a lovely impression of Port Macquarie. We saw more of the area than we otherwise would have. If we’d stayed longer we might have even gotten pictures of all the koalas! Still, we saw more than thirty of them, which we were thrilled with and had great fun doing.
Sea Acres Rainforest Centre in Port Macquarie
Port Macquarie is officially koala country. It’s where we first started seeing koala crossing roadsigns, and there were many. (Roadsigns, that is, not koalas crossing the roads!) 
This has nothing to do with the rest of this post. But this guy finally, after much tooth wiggling and patient anticipation, lost his first tooth. At seven-and-three-quarters. It was a long time coming. And it happened at the caravan park in Bonny HIlls, just south of Port Macquarie. While we were at the water park. I’m just glad he didn’t lose it coming down the waterslide! Life in a caravan means memories like these might happen anywhere! 
We saw our first of the koalas from the Hello Koalas trail. (Blog post on that coming soon.) It’s inside the visitor centre, just before you head out onto the boardwalk. See JitterBug in the back? He’s standing like the koala. 🙂 
The walk through the rainforest is on an elevated boardwalk. You never touch the ground. It’s a unique view and at a bit over a kilometre it’s long-ish for this type of walk. That was a lot of boardwalk they built! (Pssst…that’s Nan further down the boardwalk. The kids were surprised when Nan & Pa suddenly showed up and camped next to us. What a fun surprise for the kids! Oh, and us adults were happy to see them too!) 
We kept seeing these palms, from above they look almost like umbrellas. We learned they are cabbage tree palms. They were used for weaving baskets, fishing nets and even hats. 
This is a strangling fig. Aptly named. It makes such pretty patterns around the tree. I find these interesting because they are not parasitic, although they look like they must be. They do harm the host tree since they end up using some of the available sunshine and nutrients, but really they are using the tree for structure. They take hold somewhere up the trunk and drop their roots ever so slowly to the ground. We’ve seen many of these in various rainforests. 
The palms. Have I mentioned I love palm trees? Even though they aren’t trees? 
This guy didn’t last the whole walk. He fell asleep in his pram. 
So many neat things to see in a rainforest! 
We learned that a plant growing on a tree is called an epiphyte. Who knew? (Put your hand down, all you botanists.) There were plenty of examples around. 
See the lanyards the kids are wearing? 
In the visitor centre before you head out the door you can grab a lanyard for your kids to wear. They can search along the boardwalk for medallions that match the animals on their lanyards. At first I thought we were supposed to try to spot the actual animals and I was wondering how on earth we’d spot them and how long the kids would want to stay to look for them all. I was relieved to find it was just matching pictures. SkeeterBug and LadyBug both had birds, so many of theirs overlapped. And now we commence with pictures of all the matching medallions… 
JitterBug had insects and other creatures. In each picture he tried to pose like the animal on the medallion. Knowing JitterBug, this is unsurprising. :) That last one’s a spider, in case you’re wondering about the face he’s making! 
More birds, and the hoods came on because it started to rain. In the rainforest. Imagine. 
Can you tell what the first one is? See the tongue? He’s being a snake. The picture is hard to see. The last one’s a possum. (By the way, I finally looked up the difference between an opossum and a possum. I was wondering if they just have different names in North America vs Australia. Nope, they are different creatures altogether. I totally agree with this guy that says the main difference is that Australian possums are cute and cuddly looking while American opossums are scary looking with their pointy teeth. We’ve met several friendly possums during our travels. They are mostly interested in our food and trash, pretty much ignoring us mere people altogether.) 
This last picture was in the pouring rain. We ended up making a dash for it and happened to see SkeeterBug’s last medallion along the way. We lost Nan & Pa and the pram with a sleeping TurboBug, they’d taken refuge on the boardwalk under the tree. We all ended up a bit wet by the time we made it back to the visitor centre. 
Fortunately it was warm and dry inside. A lovely way to spend an afternoon, in the rain in the rainforest in Port Macquarie. What a great idea they have for a kids activity, to keep them engaged through the walk. We enjoyed this much more than we thought we would, so glad we went!
Harrington, NSW
All I have to show for our time in Harrington are some pictures of the kids riding the go-carts at the caravan park we stayed in. We were so tired after our time in Sydney that we didn’t do much of anything during our stay there. This park was not busy and when the kids hired the go-carts they were allowed to have them for a couple of hours. They had been nagging asking to ride them for two days straight, so it was very exciting to get them for more than the usual half hour or so. We see these occasionally at various caravan parks (especially the Big4 parks) but since they cost money to hire them the kids don’t always get a chance to ride them. 
TurboBug absolutely can’t be left out of anything. He knows how to say ‘mine’ and ‘mine turn’ so there is no stopping him! He had to be the one driving, too. 🙂 
The beach was not easily accessible here, we were near a lagoon but beyond that a river separates you from the beach. We walked down the path a bit and came to a popular fishing spot, complete with a long table and taps to clean your catch. Directly in front of the table a group of pelicans, more than a dozen, waited ever so patiently for any tidbits someone might throw their way. They were very close and we got to marvel over how big they are. We watched as one or two asserted their dominance over the others. Have I mentioned I love pelicans? I love pelicans. They were so fun to watch. The kids know how much I love pelicans and they are always pointing them out to me. Pity I didn’t have my camera with me! This was the first caravan park we stayed at that had a waterpark. We were so amazed to see it at the time, but we’ve learned that as you come north many of the bigger parks have them. It was really too cold to spend much time at the waterpark, but the kids had a go anyway. We spent a few nights in Harrington recovering from our time in Sydney. Then it was time to head north again! ETA: Just wanted to add another memory. As we drove into the caravan park we went right by the jumping pillow. TurboBug immediately started saying ‘pillow, pillow’ but it had been ages- months- since we’d stayed at a park with a jumping pillow. I was so surprised that he remembered! As soon as he stepped out of the car he ran there as fast as he could. We had to watch him closely while we were there, even with that he still manage to head down there on his own a couple of times before we realised he was gone. Thankfully it wasn’t a busy park.
Life in a Caravan: SIx Months In
We moved out of our house the end of September last year. We spent about five weeks in America, then came back to our van. The end of November we started our life on the road. By the time we got to Sydney, we’d been living in our van for six months. 
Six months! The kids are calling this journey our ‘one-year trip’. At this point I’m pretty sure it will be longer than a year. We don’t have a specific end date in mind. My husband (happily) quit his job and is studying full-time. We aren’t rushed. 
We’ve completely adjusted to this lifestyle. There are things that we love about life on the road. There are things we don’t love. There are plenty of advantages and disadvantages. But we are finding that right now this lifestyle very much suits us. 
Less stuff. More time. Living on top of each other. Chasing a toddler with no house or yard to contain him! New towns to get lost in. New friends to make. Plenty of sights to see. I can’t tell you how frustrated I was with the amount of stuff in our house. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t get out from under it all. I love having less stuff and a smaller space to keep clean. I also love all the time we get outdoors. There were many days in the past where I’d get to the end of the day and realise I hadn’t stepped out of the house all day long. Not even to check the mail, the kids did that. With this lifestyle it would be very hard not to step outside. 
We have our routines for packing up and moving to a new place. We have school days and rest days and sight-seeing days and shopping days and laundry days. 
Are you wondering about the pictures in this post? Rocks, trees, plants, and whatnot. These are pictures I found on my camera. The kids took them while we were in the caravan park in Sydney. I love seeing what’s special to them. 
The kids have adjusted well. They easily make friends with any kids that are around. They happily tell people about our ‘one-year trip’. They talk about what life will be like once we are in a house again. They talk of their friends at home, and their toys, and our pets that we found new homes for. But they don’t seem to be too homesick, I suppose because their home and family are with them. It’s not like a holiday where you make do with what you have for a short time before you go back to your regular life. This is our regular life. It’s a different mindset. When we were in America and moving around from place to place it was harder on them, especially little TurboBug. Every time we’d pack up to move to a new hotel he would fall to pieces. That hasn’t happened during this trip. He has the consistency of the caravan as his home. It makes all the difference to him, and to all of us. It makes it feel like a normal life, just in a small space with a constantly changing view out the bedroom window. 
When we got to Sydney, this little guy’s favourite bear stayed in the car. At night we often lock up some things in the car so they don’t disappear. Things like our grill, boogie boards, bike helmets, etc. Since we didn’t use our car much in Sydney, things ended up piled on top of this lovely little bear and TurboBug didn’t see him for a few days. When we got Bear out again, TurboBug was ecstatic. He happily cuddled and carried him around for ages. It may have been the cutest thing ever. 
We left Sydney pretty darn tired. We needed a place to veg for a couple of days. (Spelling veg that way doesn’t look right. I know it is right, but I still want to spell it vedge. My spell check doesn’t like that.) We stopped in Tahlee. This is the only picture I have from our stay there, but it’s enough for me to remember. To remember the kids climbing around in the rocks finding creatures, collecting buckets full of them. Fishing. Asbestos in the bathroom roof! The boat full of sand. The scary dock and swimming area that had been damaged by a recent storm. The beautiful wooden bench with a Bible verse carved into it. 
So many memories on this one-year trip. Sometimes it is very hard living together in this small space. If one of us is in a bad mood it affects all of us in ways that it otherwise wouldn’t. But then we get to go outside and see things like the view in the above picture. And we adapt. And we move on to the next place. So much of our journey still ahead!