Moving north up the coast

I guess you could call today a travel day, but really I didn't go that far.  I'm now about 80 kms further north up the coast in New South Wales, staying with friends in a little village called Lake Cathie (pronounced 'Cat-eye').  Lake Cathie is about a 15 minute drive south of Port Macquarie and has a permanent population of about 2 000.

The weather cooperated this morning, and although not brilliant sunshine I did get in one last walk to the beach at Old Bar.

On the way up the coast I stopped at Dooragan National Park, which is near a little town called Laurieton.  The local aboriginal people tell a dreamtime story of three brothers of the Birpai tribe who were killed by a witch called Widjirriejuggi and were buried where the mountains stand. The youngest of the three was Dooragan, for whom the park is named.  By amazing coincidence, when Captain Cook passed the area in 1770 he named the mountains "Three Brothers", since "these Hills bore some resemblance to each other".
A road to the summit of North Brother Mountain was built in 1970 and the views from the top are SPECTACULAR!!!

Looking south,

and looking north.  Here you can see the towns of Laurieton, Dunbogan and North Haven and various inland lakes heading up to Port Macquarie.

This is a popular place for paragliding and I was lucky to capture a few in my photos (above) as well as watch this fellow take off.

The Camden Haven River is located in North Haven.  It is an open and trained intermediate wave dominated barrier estuary.  The river flows for about 75 kms and drops nearly 700 metres from its source in the Gibraltar Ranges.  

Grants Beach is popular with surfers

and the southern end of the beach is protected by a breakwall that marks the entrance into the Camden Haven River.  I took a walk out to the end of the breakwall and spent some time 'wave watching'.

And now here in Lake Cathie.  I had time for a little walk on the beach before dinner ... pretty lovely!!