On day, while Max and Campbell were bouncing around, Dot and decided to visit the local botanical gardens and we were highly impressed! The gardens were fascinating, well maintained and attractively laid out. Have a look for yourselves, starting a wetland near the entrance.
These are not prickles, but part of the mangrove root system so the the trees can be fed oxygen when the tide rolls in and covers them with water.
Here's a lovely view of Coffs Creek with mangroves lining the intersection between land and water, followed by an image of the mangroves themselves.
Here was one of the great moments on our trip. We were told by staff that a koala had been sighted and roughly where to look. And guess what!! We saw it slowly moving around high in a tree. My photos are the best I could do, but we were transfixed for quite a while ... along with another couple who had binoculars and could see the creature more clearly.
This is a scribbly gum whose bark peels away to reveal tracks made by insects. Alas, for this tree, humans also got into the act and scribbled all over it!
The lovely aerial root system of a fig tree, around which Ibises were feeding.
And here's something you'd love to eat. It's an Elephant Apple from India ... well, not quite ... the species the produced it is found in India, but the garden's specimen produced this massive fruit. By the way, elephants are particularly partial to it - hence the name. But humans can eat the flesh which I gather finds its way into curries.
Australians seem to love Japanese gardens. See my earlier post on the beautiful gardens at Cowra, some 800 km to the southwest of Coffs Harbour. And, right now the Japanese and Australians seem to be getting along together just fine. Apart from the strong tourism between the two countries, our economies are integrating, we're heading up the Trans Pacific Partnership (a multilateral trans-Pacific trading block), and working together on defence planning ... with the main concerns there being China and Russia increasingly throwing their weight around. The next 5 photos show the Japanese gardens.
And, back to our circumnavigation of the botanical gardens.
That's all for now, but the show is well worth a visit.
AS
These are not prickles, but part of the mangrove root system so the the trees can be fed oxygen when the tide rolls in and covers them with water.
Here's a lovely view of Coffs Creek with mangroves lining the intersection between land and water, followed by an image of the mangroves themselves.
Here was one of the great moments on our trip. We were told by staff that a koala had been sighted and roughly where to look. And guess what!! We saw it slowly moving around high in a tree. My photos are the best I could do, but we were transfixed for quite a while ... along with another couple who had binoculars and could see the creature more clearly.
This is a scribbly gum whose bark peels away to reveal tracks made by insects. Alas, for this tree, humans also got into the act and scribbled all over it!
The lovely aerial root system of a fig tree, around which Ibises were feeding.
And here's something you'd love to eat. It's an Elephant Apple from India ... well, not quite ... the species the produced it is found in India, but the garden's specimen produced this massive fruit. By the way, elephants are particularly partial to it - hence the name. But humans can eat the flesh which I gather finds its way into curries.
Australians seem to love Japanese gardens. See my earlier post on the beautiful gardens at Cowra, some 800 km to the southwest of Coffs Harbour. And, right now the Japanese and Australians seem to be getting along together just fine. Apart from the strong tourism between the two countries, our economies are integrating, we're heading up the Trans Pacific Partnership (a multilateral trans-Pacific trading block), and working together on defence planning ... with the main concerns there being China and Russia increasingly throwing their weight around. The next 5 photos show the Japanese gardens.
And, back to our circumnavigation of the botanical gardens.
That's all for now, but the show is well worth a visit.
AS
2 comments:
Seeing a koala in the wild is such a special treat!
What a sweetie that Koala is. Thank you, Uncle Tony.
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