Holidaying in Northern NSW: Part 2

Continuing on our drive towards Port Macquarie, we took another rest stop in the beautiful country town of Grafton, NSW. I had the pleasure of living there for 11 months in 1988-89 and my oldest son (the prodigal) was born there.

The beauty and peacefulness of the town was much the same, however in 24 years Grafton has grown enormously. We had the pleasure of spending an hour with my blogger friend Karen, husband Jim & their beautiful family. As we drove off on our way, I couldn't help but stop to take a reminiscent shot of the river we used to water ski on each afternoon...

The aim was to catch sunset in Coffs Harbour after we left Grafton, but we enjoyed watching it set over the mountains to the west as we drove south. By the time we reached Coffs Harbour, it was almost dark. I didn't mind though, as we just found the local jetty and I took the opportunity to shoot one of my favourite forms of photography... night time Long Exposure.

As we were running quite late, we decided to drive straight to Port Macquarie from Coffs without any more stops. This turned out to be a risky decision with my DVT. We arrived in Port Macquarie at 8:45pm, had dinner, and around 11pm I noticed that my left calf and ankle were quite swollen so Michael made a call to the local hospital and I was advised to go to emergency. We were there until 3am, so the next day was declared a sleep in, rest day.

But late afternoon, the swelling in my left leg had subsided enough so we decided to go down to the breakwall area of the Hastings River for sunset.

 I also had the chance to try out my new GND filters.

The ship docked at Lady Nelson Wharf is called the "Notorious". It is a replica of a 15th century Caravel which took 10 years to build entirely out of reclaimed timber. The owners have been voyaging the eastern Australian seaboard since February 2011.

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