Coffs Harbour

After Byron Bay is a brief stop in Coffs Harbour. This small town is full of nature everywhere you look. But first, a fun fact about Coffs Harbour. The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour was the first "Big Thing" in Australia. It started as a small road side banana shack to advertise Coffs Harbour's banana industry.

The Big Banana!

My first morning I went kayaking in the creek with some people from the hostel. We saw lots of birds and fish. We also saw a baby sting ray and tons of little blue crabs! This species of crab lives on sandy beaches from the Bay of Bengal to Australia. The males may form small "armies" which traverse the beach at low tide, before the crabs dig into the sand to wait for the next low tide.

Blue Crabs

Later in the day we went for a walk on Emerald Beach and through Moonee Beach Nature Reserve. There were tons of wild kangaroo and wallabies there. The kangaroos were the Eastern Grey Kangaroo. Apparently there are 57 different breeds of kangaroos! I also learned that they can chose the gender of the joey they want, how cool I'm jealous! A big kangaroo (around 7ft fall) can jump up to 9 meters with every jump, longer than the farthest long jump. The average life span of these kangaroos in the wild is six years while in captivity they can live up to 20 years. The big disparity is due to wild averages in the hot dry deserts that bring the numbers way down because they can't handle the heat. Sadly, because of high population numbers, you can get a license to go out and kill kangaroo in certain areas. This keeps the population from getting out of hand. At least they aren't going extinct anytime soon!

We saw at least 50 wild kangaroo at Moonee Beach Nature Reserve

Talk about a perfect picture!

The next day we went to Bruxner Park Conservation Reserve, basically a rainforest. This rainforest is full of Fig trees which are endemic to Australia. There are many different types of fig trees in Australia and they are hollow in the middle and you can climb up the middle of them like a ladder!

We also managed to hear a Lyrebird (we assume). They are ground-dwelling Australian birds that are known for their amazing mimicking skills and the males huge beautiful tail. There are two species, the superb lyrebird and Albert's lyrebird. The superb lyrebird is found in areas of rainforest in Victoria, New South Wales, and south-east Queensland. Albert's lyrebird is only found in a small area of Southern Queensland rainforest. They mimic almost anything, including sounds from there environment such as machines! The superb lyrebird is not endangered while Albert's lyrebird is labeled as vulnerable.

Superb Lyrebird

Albert's Lyrebird

Some other common wildlife in that rainforest are platypus, eels, echidnas, giant snails and leaches. I will cover the echidnas in my next blog. The others are general animals that are found in any rainforest.

Me climbing a vine in the rainforest

Posing for a typical tourist picture on the Jetty in Coffs Harbour