After our pretty rubbish last night in Byron Bay we headed further down the coast to Coffs Harbour. We heard that Coffs Harbour was a fairly small, picturesque town which sounded ideal for us, as we figured that it would not be very busy and a great place to recharge our batteries.

When we arrived the town itself although not huge, was bigger than we first expected and after jumping in the mini bus that had come to collect us from the bus stop we headed towards the hostel. Before the hostel though our driver took us to a look out point which looked out over Coffs Harbour and out to sea. It was another clear day and the view was pretty nice, however neither of us really appreciated as we were both running on empty from the night before.

After a few months of travelling I think our first day in Coffs Harbour was a bit of a struggle, not majorly but due to the idiots in Byron Bay we just wanted to get to a nice quiet clean hostel, the one we booked into was nice enough and had pretty good facilities but due to slightly low morale in the camp it seemed 100 times worse than it actually was.

The rest of the day was a bit of a non event, our hostel was about a 20 minute walk from the town centre, so while Belle caught up on some sleep I headed into town to pick up some food and a weapon against our arch enemy, 'the snorer.' After browsing the town centre briefly, where I found a 'Rivers' (the shop me and Joe walked miles for) picking up some food and some ear plugs I started the return journey back to the hostel.

When I arrived back Belle was still fast asleep so I thought I would try and restore a bit of the enthusiasm for backpacking, I had lost the previous night, and decided to take a stroll up to the look out point we had visited earlier. It was about a half hour walk from the hostel, all up hill, but it took me through some real Australian neighbourhoods, passing some fancy houses along the way. By the time I had reached the lookout point the sun was starting to go down but I managed to catch the last of the light. The view was just as nice as earlier on in the day but this time I appreciated it more as I stood there looking out for a good 15 minutes, sights like this is why we came travelling in the first place.

After I got back to the hostel Belle and me tried out our ear plugs only to find that they didnt work very well and that the hostel actually sold ear plugs as well, only alot cheaper. So with about $10 wasted we covered all bases and bought some $1 ear plugs as well, which actually worked alot better.

Day two in Coffs Harbour and we had both had a much better nights sleep and were feeling more enthusiastic about backpacking again. We again headed to town, this time taking a more scenic journey along a boardwalk (I had followed the main road yesterday) hoping to pick up a bargain in Rivers. After a brwose we found out that although Rivers is cheaper than alot of other clothes shops in Australia, it was not as cheap as we first thought, I think we may have hyped it up too much in our heads, expecting them to give us free clothes just for walking through the doors.

I think we have already blogged about this previously, but if we haven't here it is again. During our travels we have been on a strict budget which means meal times take a hit on the imagination front. I think I can honestly say that we have eaten so many packs of instant noodles that we were in danager of turning into one. With this in mind we decided that we needed a break from them and picked up a couple of cheap packs of steak (really cheap) and made ourselves a couple of steak sandwhichs, complete with some fried onions and salad, if only noodles tasted this good!

After eating a meal which actually had some sort of flavour to it, we decided to head down to the harbour. A 15 minute stroll in the opposite direction from town and we were greeted by the coast line. It had the standard beach set up, along with a pier and the harbour itself, which was protected by two hills, one at eaither side. Mutton Bird island was on the right and Corambirra Pointon the other. A walk along the beach took us to something Island which you could walk up.

We started our ascent (slightly dramatic maybe) and about half way up stopped to watch a gourp of surfers / body boarders catching some waves, or at least some of them were. I wanted a good picture of a surfer on a wave and stood for about 10 minutes focusing on one surfer (the closest to us) in anticipation of an action shot. No such luck, he either didn't want his picture taken, rubbish at surfing or was just lazy, either way I never got the picture I was after.

After this disappointment we continued our route to the top of the hill following a gravel path, were not sure if it was a 'official' path or one that had formed after lots of people just making their own way up to the top, none the less we reached the top. The top was a bit of a let down, it was a decent view but the grass was all over grown and there wasn't a bench in sight, both in flip flops we didn't want to risk anything munching on our toes so we headed down. After a bit of minor rock climbing we made it back onto the harbour wall and made our way back to the hostel.

Our hostel of choice had free body board and kayak hire for those who were staying there. After body boarding in Byron we opted to take to advantage of the kayak hire. After wheeling a rather large kayak across a fairly busy main road, taking the trolley back to the hostel and then heading back to the river bank we were ready to launch. The hostel had told us that we could only kayak along the river during high tide, which gave us two hours paddling our way up stream. The river banks were think with forest so there wasn't much of a view but it was very quiet and quite relaxing until we had to paddle up stream, which required a bit more effort.

With the kayak returned, lunch eaten and a brief swim and sunbathe, we decided to head down to the harbour again and to Mutton Bird Island. This time there was a paved path to follow up the hill so there was no need for amateur rock climbing.

We cooked ourselves a sausage pasta dish that evening, this time with pork sausages (Belle was craving the beef variety but I stood firm!) and tucked into a piece of spiced tea cake, which we had bought on special offer for 99 cent. That just about rounded off our evening apart from packing up our trusty backpacks, we turned in for the night.

We had planned to break up our journey down to Sydney a bit more by stopping at Port Macquarie (a place similar to Coffs Harbour) but the WRC was in town and therefore hostel prices had gone through the roof, so we took the decision to head straight for Sydney - the last stop on our East Coast adventure.

After three nights of decent sleep and a couple of meals which didn't come in a packet with a sachet of flavouring, we felt better about getting back on the road again. Coffs Harbour was intended to be a to stop over to break up the journey to Sydney and also a place to chill out for a few days before heading back to the chaos of a big city, it was exactly that and we were now ready take on Sydney.