The First Seven Days...

We’ve managed our first week. I met a woman in a delicatessen who asked why we came to Coffs Harbour, of all the places we could have chosen in Australia, and I mentioned the lovely climate. “Well”, she said, “it’s the summers…” I said, “Go on then, tell me. How hot does it really get?” Her reply was, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity. It gets so sticky that the air stands still, but I suppose that if you can last one summer you’ll be fine”… So there you go – we’re in for a not-so-hot but very sticky summer, and I guess it will be interesting to see what we think in only a couple of months’ time.

The weather here has been beautiful for the most part. We arrived in warm rain and a couple of grey days, but since then there has been lots of sunshine every day, with intermittent showers that seem to come out of nowhere! We’ve been down to the beach several times – several different beaches, in fact, as there are so many to choose from! – and it’s been lovely. The water is about 19º C and there’s great surf, and the beaches are mostly lovely golden sand with occasional fine shell-gravel (don’t know what the formal name for it is) and interesting rocks. On our first trip to the beach Patrick and Ella saw two dolphins breaking the waves!
Patrick has bought himself a body board, and we’ve offered him Surf School lessons to improve his surf skills and enable him to get out of trouble as there are plenty of rip tides on the local beaches. I took him and Ella out to Diggers Beach the other day and he went body boarding and reached the limits of his experience… as I told him when he went into the water, “I don’t swim well enough to be able to rescue you, so don’t get into trouble!” but he almost did… so Surf School – his birthday present – will be very useful!