Sunday 7 Feb 2015

On Sunday we went to the harbourside market with Ruby. The crowd was a curious mixture of young families and ageing hippies; the atmosphere was friendly and laid back. There was a mixture of white elephant stalls and commercial stalls with pleasant-smelling placebos and other expensive new age bumf. A folk band played in the shade of some large trees.

When we had finished trawling the white elephant stalls for treasures and vegan treats, we drove to Dorrigo National Park via Bellingen, along Waterfall Way. We had a quick picnic lunch on arrival, and then went on the Skywalk Lookout which affords fabulous views of the National Park and the Bellinger Valley beyond.

The highlight of the afternoon, however, was a long walk through the rainforest that took us past the Crystal Shower Falls.

The rainforest walk is cool, magical and utterly enchanting at every turn—except for the leeches, which seem to find a meal on you no matter how diligently you try to avoid them. Susie went crazy with her camera, taking wide shots and loving close-ups of exquisite fungi that adorned rotting logs, capturing raindrops along the fringes of their delicate bonnets.

We stopped in the pub in Bellingen on way home for some food and a beer, and Ruby napped in the back seat of the car on the drive back to Coffs Harbour. Later in the evening, Toby joined us for a swim in the pool at the motel.

To her dismay, Susie lost some of the photographs she took during our walk through the rainforest. Some kind of error occurred as she was transferring the files to her laptop, and she discovered it only after she had wiped the photos from camera’s memory card.