Day 16 Sunday 29/6/2025 Murwillumbah to Wooli, NSW, overcast 19

Donna is at the gate saying goodbye to all of today’s departing caravanners. She and Pete really are in their perfect job.

As we leave town, birds are following the cane cutters as the insects and grubs are stirred up. Once more we pick up the Pacific Motorway, this time heading south. With paddocks of cane and cows and I spot banana palms growing beside the entrance to one of the road tunnels…it all sounds like breakfast, milk, sugar and bananas, hang on don’t they grow coffee around here somewhere? I’m always fascinated by the vegetation and here we have palms of many types, orange and purple flowers amongst masses of creepers. Around Byron Bay it thins out and now there are orchards of macadamias and farms and tall Hoop pines. We peel off to Wooli through the Pillar Valley. Now it’s dragon fruit, more cows and blueberries.

The Solitary Islands Resort is ideally situated between the Wooli Wooli River and the ocean beach. It’s a family focused park set amongst hundreds of palms. We have a good site with a swathe of synthetic grass. We are pleasantly surprised at how well the synthetic grass works in a caravan park. It’s neat and clean and soft underfoot and because there are no dirt patches we have a much larger area to spread out. It must be a lot easier to maintain than grass.

Once we’re all set up and homely we take a drive down to the river mouth just to get our bearings and to see if the oyster man is open. But first I should describe the geography here. You see Wooli is on a long spit that separates the river from the ocean. Our caravan park is at the wider inland end along with a housing estate with access to the beach. Small homes follow the river down to the ‘holiday end’ of town and this is where it gets colourful. The spit here is only 2 streets wide. There’s a bowling club, Post Office, coffee shop, tackle shop and oyster shed interspersed with holiday shacks. In days gone by these shacks appeared to have grown up and out as the whim took the owners. One can imagine that a few beers on a summer’s night would have spawned some crazy ideas.  “Gee, Bob you’d have a great view if you went up another storey”. “Outta the way Marj we’re bringin’ in the ladders!” The kind of spot where kids can run free and all one needs is a fishing rod and a few building materials. Or so it seemed. Now, many of the holiday shacks have had a lick of paint, a bit of a tart up and have a cutesy house name on the front wall…and a holiday let advert out front. And all because this is a priceless little hideaway that many have never heard of.

Now, back to the natural attributes, the river is dark with tannin, wide, and makes a swift hook turn where it enters the sea aided by some creative rock walls. The ocean beach is a long arc of white sand stretching north to the hamlet of Minnie Water.

Dinner is sausages with some more of that creamy mashed potato from Murwillumbah, snow peas and mushrooms.

The rain has started and, what was forecast as a few millimetres is now being called a ‘cyclone bomb’. I reckon those weather folk having been listening to far too much of that Trump trash talk.

We’ve got TV tonight but only by using the 12 volt power.

Accom: $29.00 Fuel: $40.00 Towing Kms: 220Kms