Saturday July 10 - sunrise, sunset...

Couldn't resist an early morning walk to the point for sunrise - and it was worth the effort. The birds were waking and the banksias were full of early morning noises. We watched the dolphins play in the surf for a while and spotted an early morning fisherman as he risked a cold bath to scramble down the steep rocks to his favourite spot.

Breakfast with a view of the beach - not a bad start to the weekend. The campsite is full of surfers and anglers, most of them look as though they have been coming here since the 70s and we were hoping that we hadn't stopped in anyone's favourite campsite.

The beach offered an easy walk around the bay, so we wandered along, watching the surfers, sanderlings and dolphins and trying to identify myriad small birds that darted in and out of the coastal scrub. Fishermen had boats and nets waiting on the sand for the next school of mullet and a teenager sat huddled against the dunes, having been dropped in the water from a boat about 100m out and told to swim ashore - I can't help but wonder what the story was...

Back at the camp and after coffee and some lemon slice (homemade because we have an abundance of lemons on the tree and absolutely delish if I might say so myself :-) we went back to the headland for some more exploring.

The views were quite different further around the point and we saw lots more birds as we walked. Brown quail and grassbirds, lewins and new holland honeyeaters and little wattlebirds were everywhere. A sea eagle soared above, king parrots and rainbow and scaly breasted lorikeets looked down from the high branches. The bird list would be too long to add here, suffice to say it was hard to remember them all when we got back to camp and I relied on photos to remind me.

Too early for lunch, so we decided to go back to the Melaleuca campsite and walk the big hill track before lunch. This is a great little walk up through coastal rainforest (ugh, had a leech latch on to my leg) and then around the point just in from the cliffs. We came across a kestrel, all fluffed up and sunning him (or her) self on a lichen covered rock at the lookout area. We walked quite close before it flew away. More honeyeaters and lorikeets chatted away to us on the way back down to the camper.

The campsite was closed and we didn't fancy the idea of negotiating the potholes again, so we had lunch at Crescent Head and then drove south down the coast road from Port Macquarie to Crowdy Bay National Park and the Diamond Head campsite.

We arrived in time to set up the camper and have a soothing glass of red before we walked out to the point at split rock just on sunset. A sea eagle watched us and a sooty oystercatcher sat out on the rocks near the shore. No rain tonight so we ate outdoors and enjoyed the cool, calm winter night.