On The Road: Day 128 Bundagen Saturday 13th October 2012

Hi Folks

A day off for us today, as we decided to take up Shunyam's suggestion to go to the Coffs Harbour Botanic Gardens we were able to do a few pick up items for projects around the garden as well, saving Shuni a drive into Coffs.

We collected the star droppers for the peach tunnel and the elbows for the fire pump pipe, then drove into the city centre to find a jeweler to repair my necklace. This is the same necklace that went flying into the grass at 4 am in Weipa (Day 83, 2010) and has already had another repair in Tasmania.

The first jeweler was closed. The next one we stumbled upon in the city square turned out to be an interesting encounter.

Firstly he fixed my necklace on the spot and did not charge me for it. Then, as I made some remark about the necklaces' history this got us onto our road tripping the country. He suggested we should visit Yowah to see migratory birds and go opal noodling. He (Nicholas) showed us an opal piece that he had made recently. As the conversation progressed further he produced another piece which happened to be the piece I had voted for at the Bellingen Art prize (Day 120). I showed him the picture from my camera, unfortunately he did not win the peoples award! Nicholas then told us the story of the piece. It is a gold, silver and opal potpourri box and depicts Yowah and a Yowie, his mate, and other aspects from his time there. I got to hold it, truly beautiful and unique, but unfortunately outside my budget by a couple of 00's.

Black Panther

Nicholas then showed us another piece made from this composite opal with a natural "picture" of a black panther in the stone. He will probably sell it in South America as black panthers are some sort of talisman there. In this short encounter we had a good few laughs, exchanged some information, got to see some unusual pieces of jewelry, learnt a few things and mused on "synchronicity". Nicholas gave us his card. We didn't have one of ours to exchange, and I have only now looked at the name of the shop "What Women Want", also gave me a chuckle as we watched the Mel Gibson movie a couple of weeks ago.

I really recommend a visit there and have a look at his web page also. Ohh and I did buy some lovely gold sleeper earrings.

Next stop the Botanic Gardens, the gardens are not that old only established in the 1980's (opened 1988). The site having a previous history as a rubbish dump and earlier the night soil dump, might have something to do with why things are growing so well. We wandered about for a couple of hours and had planned to have lunch at the tearooms, to find the building completed but no shop.

A late lunch was finally taken at the Fish Co-op and cafe at the marina, me, grilled fish and salad, Simon, squid and chips. We had heard there was a good lookout and decided it must be the one at Mutton Bird Island so we took a walk up to the top and managed to see whales frolicking about in the distance, too far for any decent pictures or video.

Intending to drive the road between Corumba and Dorrigo we set out at 4pm stopping for coffee at Corumba before deciding this scenic drive would have to wait until another day. We drove around Coffs and Sawtell getting the lay of the land, bought take-away pizza and parked at the Sawtell lookout to watch the sun go down.

Perfect end to a nice day out.

Susan