After a few days inland, we decided to head back to the coast to see if we could find some consistent sunshine. We put Port Stephens into a hotel search and chose a couple of affordable places. After driving by them, we settled on a place located across the street from a beautiful stretch of beach called Shoal Bay. It is a leisurely few hours north of the airport in Sydney where we leave for the last country on this journey. We were to stay there for two nights, but it only took a few moments for my wife to fall in love with the place.
The picture above is of a small flock of Rainbow Lorikeets that greeted us on our balcony after the first night’s stay. Shortly after that, we saw dolphins swimming in the blue water of the bay. One of the reasons we chose Port Stephens is that it is listed as a place where one of Australia’s iconic animals can be found in the wild. We have been asking people about Koalas since we got to Australia. We got similar answers from people, something like…they are really hard to find, or I have been living here a long time and have only seen them once or twice in the wild. There are plenty of yellow and black street signs warning you to drive carefully when you are traveling in places where they are known to exist. Koalas are in trouble. The reasons include habitat destruction, competition from invasive species, and disease, in addition to the road accidents that happen when the slow-moving marsupials explore their habitat for eucalyptus trees with fresh leaves. Most of the people we talked to tried to lower our hopes and gave us suggestions on where to look for wallabies or kangaroos. With time running out and expectations low, we set out for a community in Port Stephens where they have set up reserves for the Koalas. We went into the information center of one of those reserves and we were greeted by a husband-and-wife volunteer team that told us about the park and gave us a map. The man walked us out of the building and pointed to a path where he had seen one earlier that day. Maybe, we were in luck.
If you would like to see what we saw on those last few days in Australia, click here. We hope we will be returning to this part of Australia soon. Australia was as welcoming as it was beautiful. It is too bad it is on the other side of the planet from where we live.