Day 95 Sunday 13/9/20 Mylestom, warm 24

Bloody heart tablets! The last chemist gave me a different brand and these ones don’t break evenly in half. That’s enough of my whingeing for the day.

A walk up the beach on a clear blue morning. It’s warm, surfers have parked their cars on the beach. The waves are breaking in mesmerising waves and the sea has offered up a large dead jellyfish. I wouldn’t want to tangle with that one.

El Prado visits the toilet block and wonders why there’s a sanitary unit in the cubicle. On exiting he finds a surprised lady brushing her hair. Should have gone to Specsavers.

Following the river to Bellingen we stock up on fruit and veggies at our new favourite market. It seems that we have favourite butchers and fruit markets all over the country and when we’re not discussing Covid, we spend most of our happy hour talking lovingly of them. Scouting around the district and beyond Urunga we find Hungry Head (I’d love to know the origins of that one). There are bushy picnic grounds and a life saving pavilion and lookout above the beach at the mouth of Dalhousie Creek. Curious to understand this new area we drive into the hills of Repton. A tiny town perched on a ridge a only a few kilometres from Mylestom but enjoying a very different aspect. It has rainforest vegetation clinging to the ridge and supporting tree ferns and blooming azaleas. Houses perch on hillsides and nestle in gullies so steep that those residents must be fit.

A pair of Scaly Breasted Lorikeets join us for happy hour. Much smaller than rainbow lorikeets their emerald green feathers are interspersed with bright yellow ones. Their heads a teal colour with bright red eyes and beaks. The lorikeets are quickly joined by Noisy Miners and their even noisier fluffy chicks, crested pigeons and brush turkeys. There seems to be a pattern forming here, either the birds are flocking to us or we’re becoming a bunch of laid back, wine drinking twitchers.