White Legs Gleaming in the Sun

We're spending some time in Yamba, on the north coast of NSW. Yamba started life as a fishing village, but the fishermen now rub shoulders with tourists, who come here to bask in the 'second best climate in the world', behind only San Diego according to the CSIRO. We have no idea what the criteria were, but presumably lots of sunshine would have rated pretty highly. We've finally got our shorts out of the cupboard after what felt like an endless southern winter, and our pasty white legs are soaking up the sun's rays.

Our first priority when we arrived was to check out the golf course and we were quite pleased with what we found. We've already had 4 games each, plus a further game at Maclean not far down the road. The members have all been very welcoming, and the course fairly challenging and in good condition. In the week and a half before we leave here we plan to play several more times at Yamba, plus at some of the other courses up and down the coast.

Our time here hasn't been spent entirely playing golf, we've also done quite a few touristy things. Yamba is on the southern shore at the mouth of the Clarence River, with sister town Iluka on the northern shore. A few days ago we caught the ferry to Iluka and did a nice walk through the World Heritage listed Iluka Nature Reserve, culminating in some spectacular views at Iluka Bluff lookout, back over the forest and river as well as along the coast. We made our way back along roads to the town centre (a rather grand name for the couple of shops available) and after a much better than expected lunch at the local chippy (Wendy had an excellent home made seafood chowder and John some very tasty grilled fish with chips and salad) we caught the afternoon ferry back to Yamba. It was a very satisfying day out.

The following day we headed south down the coast a bit, to the Yuraygir National Park, and did some more walking, through coastal woodland and scrub, then back along one of the magnificent beaches in the park. The photo at left would probably be recognised by many as the round balls of sand produced by crabs when they dig their burrows in the sand. These are below the high water line so they must do them twice a day after each high tide. We tried to produce similar balls ourselves but all we could get was a handful of grains, they must have some crabby secret to get such perfect orbs.

Having got the taste for walking we headed north today to Bundalung National Park and spent a leisurely hour strolling through the forest by the Evans River.

It isn't all exercise for us here at Yamba, we've also been supporting the local fishing industry. As well as several meals of fresh local fish, we've also had a couple of meals of prawns - at $10 a kilo from the local prawn farm how could you go wrong!