To The Falls...

On Easter Sunday, we all went to the Sherwood Forest and set off through the bush...


...to the waterfall....


...where you could have a natural massage in the freezing water...


....and then warm up in the autumn sun.

Coffs Harbour Live

You might like to see what the place looks like live, as it were. If you go to Swellnet and click on "surf cams" and then "Coffs Harbour" you'll see how the day's shaping up. Unless you get the time difference wrong, of course, and you log on during our night when you'll see nothing. We're nine hours ahead.

The three views, all from the Jetty area of Coffs, are, in rotation, of Gallows Beach (so-called because of the rocks, I think), the huge beach to the south of Gallows and, bizzarely, the car park at the top of the boat ramp, which is not very interesting. The camera is on top of the Deep Sea Fishing Club, which is good for fish and chips and you can sometimes see whales from the verandah.

If you're lucky, you might see dolphins on the surf cam, jumping out of the waves, as I did one day.

A-Hunting We Will Go

Sara spotted an ad in the local paper announcing that "conservation hunting" had started in a state forest not far from here. Licensed hunters could apply to shoot introduced species of feral animals, including pigs, goats, foxes, rabbits, cats, hares and deer.

Now given that these species were introduced in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, you might thing that, like Europeans, they'd earned the right to be regarded as residents, but apparently not. They take a very strict view of what's indigenous and seem to forget that recent history has been nothing more than remorseless Europeanisation since the first landings. Still, I can't quite see why a few pigs truffling around in the woods should be lined up for slaughter. No doubt they have some fearful environmental consequences associated with them. Just like the Europeans, really.

Anyway what really caught my eye, after the bit about hunters being required to wear some blaze orange clothing so they could be indentified at all times, was this: "These areas will not be closed to the public while conservation hunting takes place."

I don't quite know whether this is another example of the "she'll be right, mate" mentality or a subtle attempt at culling another introduced and damaging species.