Rock Art Port Macquarie actually began as an art competition in 1995 & gradually evolved into a fascinating outdoor gallery.
Rock Art Port Macquarie
Sadly after a small amount of complaints 12 in 10 years the rock art is now banned. It’s crazy how a few idiots can spoil things for the majority, what a shame the council won’t hold a vote on the issue.
Celebrating an engagement.
Two lovers leave their mark to celebrate their engagement.
The mouth of the Hastings River
The river descends 1,040 metres (3,410 ft) over its 180 kilometres (110 mi) course. The Hastings river descends 1,040 metres from the Great Dividing Range over its 180 kilometres journey to the coast at Port Macquarie.
Look closely and you will see the rock art. 🙂
A beautiful day to catch a fish.
One of the locals has picked a beautiful day to fish off the rocks.
Waiting for the big one
Actually I spoke to the guy who said he was trying to catch some small fish to use for bait.
Apparently their life is a circus.
It says so on the rock. 🙂
A great tourist attraction
You can spend a very interesting hour or so checking out the Painted Rock Art Port Macquarie.
Port Macquarie
And so it goes on & on, a great addition to this terrific coastal town.
Port Macquarie’s Town Green
This is a superb park where people relax and enjoy the perfect environment beside the Hastings River.
Oxley oval
Just a short way along the road from the painted rocks is Oxly oval where cricket & football are played in beautiful surroundings.
A beautiful park beside the river.
A great place to relax have a picnic lunch and check out the Painted Rock Art Port Macquarie.
Yamba Clarence River NSW Coast has a population of just over 6,000, which tends to triple in the holiday season. The economy is based on tourism & fishing. Yamba was my 2nd stop after leaving Surfers Paradise where I had spent a week catching up with friends.
Mathew Flinders was the first European to visit Yamba Bay in July 1799.
If you live in Yamba you gotta have a boat.
The fishing is wonderful all along the NSW Coast.
If you don’t have a boat…
Go to one of the seafood restaurants along the Clarence River.
Or buy fresh seafood here
Then sit in the park close by and enjoy it. 🙂
Or perhaps here
I really love those Sydney Rock oysters (double this price in Sydney) plus the fabulous prawns.
Here is the place to eat
A nice park overlooking the water is the perfect spot to polish off your prawns & oysters.
You can watch the waves rolling in
The surf was fairly rough today on March 10th 2017.
You may like to compare room rates to the Moby Dick motel, just use THIS LINK for a great room rate.
Room with a view
When the Pacific Hotel in Yamba in northern New South Wales opened in 1934 it was lauded as “the most perfectly appointed place of all seaside resorts north of Sydney”.
The view from your room.
Eighty seven years later, the Art Deco pub still stands majestically overlooking her namesake in this town at the mouth of the Clarence River.
For a terrific room rate just book through THIS LINK.
Thanks for visiting my Yamba Clarence River NSW Coast photo blog. Next stop is Port Macquarie, check out the painted rock art by the river.
Kingscliff Northern Rivers NSW was my first stop after leaving Surfers Paradise where I had spent a week catching up with friends. My plan was to travel down the coast to Sydney stopping at various coastal towns on the way.
Kettles on
Very popular for breakfast as you can see.
Eggs Benedict for me.
Cooked to perfection. 🙂
Huge breakfast for my brother Ian.
There is nothing wrong with his appetite. 🙂
Kingscliff Northern Rivers NSW
A fairly typical coastal town with lots of coffee shops, tourists & terrific beaches.
For instance
Miles & miles of surf & sand & deserted at 9am on Wednesday March 8th 2017.
Short walk from the beach to the shops
Kingscliff Northern Rivers Coast NSW is a tourist destination with a population of a little over 6,000 with beach and estuary access for swimming, surfing, fishing and all types of water sports.
Choppy surf today
Kingscliff is only 14 kms from Coolangatta airport.
Location
It’s obvious why Kingscliff is so popular given how close it is to the Gold Coast.
A beautiful day
Kingscliff by the beach.
Kingscliff estuary
A nice peaceful picnic area.
Picnic area beside the estuary.
Grab the morning paper & relax under the trees.
Time to hit the road & head south
I got an amazing deal on my hire car from Apex, 6 days hire and drop it off at Sydney airport for only $150, a special relocation deal.
Here we go
After an excellent breakfast I’m on the road again.
Hundreds of new townhouses
So many new homes, the demand is obviously here.
Other towns heading south.
All are nice little seaside villages, I may well wind up in this area when I return permanently to Australia in the next few years.
This was Chinderah on the way to Kingscliff.
One lazy pelican and Mount Warning in the distance.
The highway to Byron Bay.
I thought I would bypass Byron Bay and head for Yamba.
Road tunnel
Cutting through the hills.
Inside the tunnel
Lucky for me there is very little traffic.
Thanks for visiting my Kingscliff Northern Rivers NSW photo blog.
This is not a travel blog just my personal photo collection from the 1970s & 80s, check it out if you wish.
Arabella St Longueville
Farewell Melbourne hello Sydney
Farewell Melbourne hello Sydney, it was early 1976 after a dramatic final few months living in Melbourne, I resigned from Sanyo Office Machines, moved to Arabella St Longueville in Sydney & started a new job as NSW sales manager with Wilkins Servis washing machines. I rented a beautiful waterfront home with the view you see above & a garage for my red E-Type Jag.
Little did I realise the next 11 years would be the most successful money making decade of my life, along with an almost non stop party regime and included luxury waterfront apartments, Jaguars & Mercedes plus a Bertram fly bridge cruiser parked outside my condo, & last but not least a red Doberman called Baxter.
This was actually 1975
However it features my friends & my beloved Jag in Beechworth Victoria, how about the hair & the bell bottom jeans? 🙂
Looking back the 1970s was probably my most exciting decade.
Carol Aboud
It didn’t take me long to get tied up with Carol who had a hair dressing salon in Double Bay. She also had a husband & 4 children but these minor complications did not stop us from having a lot of fun over the next 4 years.
There is a very funny story involving Carol on another blog, just follow THIS LINK.
My beautiful mother celebrating my birthday on the 7-7-77
What a great date for my birthday to fall on. When friends see these old photos is it any wonder they suggest I looked like a Miami drug dealer? 🙂
My Dad Arthur & my 2 best friends Wolf Wottke & Ron Walsh.
My two buddies surprised me by flying over from Adelaide without prior warning. That was a fabulous birthday present.
Carol’s birthday November 1978.
Check out the hair colour & the gold chains.
New Years Eve 1978
Apologies for the fuzzy photo, but you get the picture. 🙂
French Champagne of course
From memory we were at the Castle Cove house of my friend Peter H & the booze was really flowing.
Oh Carol, I am but a fool…..
Neil Sedaka "Oh Carol"
Peter Luciano RIP
Peter & his wife in 1979, he was Carol’s brother and sadly passed away a year or two later.
December 1978
We hired a houseboat for a weekend cruise on Hawksbury River. Two Peters, yours truly & Rob Symonds.
Talking about boats
This was my Bertram 25 moored right outside my condo at 72 Wrights Rd Drummoyne. I enjoyed six great years here & threw so many parties that I became the most hated person in the building.
St Georges Crescent Drummoyne
Just around the corner from my condo I purchased another waterfront apartment, so now I owned 2 condos & a terrace house in Glebe, I was on a roll. Working now as NSW Sales Manager for Remington Typewriters before moving to the word processing division. Enjoyed the job but hated the back stabbers, & there were plenty of them.
Selling all my Sydney properties over the years was one of my worst ever decisions, I should have kept at least one.
After the Jaguar XJ6 I upgraded to a white Mercedes Sports, life was good.
In my eyes this was one of the prettiest cars ever built.
View from my condo
With my Bertram moored right out front.
Another party at Wrights Rd
This gorgeous redhead called Beryl worked with Carol in the Double Bay salon, she had just had a boob job and I couldn’t help but admire them. 🙂
While we are on the subject of boobs….
You could never accuse Carol of being shy. 🙂
And the winner is Angie
Her name was Angela Savic, she was the girlfriend of my best friend Wolf. Without a doubt she had the best body out of all the girls we knew. Our very own Greek Goddess. 🙂
The music in the 70s produced many of my all time favourite songs, here are 3 of those.
Neale, David, Ian, Bryan & Warren, it’s a shame the photo is such poor quality.
Jenny Dale
Jenny with the red eyes was another nice girl from the late 70s who wandered into my life occasionally. 🙂
Let’s finish the year off properly
Well 1979 turned out to be a very tumultuous year, Remington gave me the flick and I joined the company who had the agency for Qyx the new word processor taking the world by storm. I did a marketing course with Exxon in Philadelphia and topped the class, there were 25 Americans in the course with me the only foreigner. Back to Australia to launch the product nationally but only lasted a few months before having a blowup with the company directors who showed me the door. I was never good at taking instructions from fools. 🙂
Now in 2023 at the ripe old age of 79, I guessing I just may have been a rebel without a cause. 🙂
To top off the year finally Carol & I parted company after 4 terrific years painting the town, I suspect I may have been going through a mid life crisis. 🙂 🙂
Consequently I took 3 months off, spent lots of time on my boat, travelled to Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand & Bali then opened my very own liquor store in March 1980.
Sydenham Cellars
Yippee, cheap booze for me. 🙂
Opening night
My friend Debbie Don was part of the celebration. More photos on THIS LINK.
The 1970s were probably the most interesting & dramatic of my life. 1972 saw me return to Sydney after a 2 year stint in Melbourne, only to see me head to Adelaide for two years as State manager for Sanyo, then back to Melbourne for two years with Sanyo before returning to Sydney in 1976.
Made some money, broke some hearts & had a lot of fun.
I was very good at my job, Sales & Marketing in the cut throat business equipment industry was a tough gig, but on reflection & being & brutally honest, my arrogant autocratic management style that worked well in the 60s & 70s was out dated in later decades. Consequently recognising my limitations I went back to what I was good at, which was selling. In the mid 80s I had a successful few years at Canon followed by 7 or 8 very good years as a financial planner with a couple of banks in QLD. In 1998 I took a year off work to travel & never really worked again. 🙂
Thanks for visiting my Farewell Melbourne hello Sydney photo blog.
It’s now 2023 and here is Glenn Frey to tell you exactly how I feel today.
Port Macquarie coastal village originally was a penal colony, these days many people retire in Port Macquarie on the NSW coast (4 hours north of Sydney), because of the temperate climate, good fishing & boating and nice beaches. I think it is the pick of the NSW coastal towns.
At the end of this post you will see how one of my distant relatives Helen Gillies arrived in Port Macquarie in 1833 after being convicted for stealing in Glasgow and shipped to Australia. Helen was my grandfather’s grandmother 🙂
Beautiful fresh prawns & delicious oysters, in fact my favourite lunch in Port is prawns & avocado on freshly baked bread with a dozen oysters natural to begin.
Port Macquarie coastal village
As good as it gets. 🙂
The Hastings River
Hastings River is also the name of a small, developing wine region. The main clusters of vineyards are located in Port Macquarie and Wauchope.
The region was first planted with vines in the 1860s but recent history of the area has been pioneered by the Cassegrain family with Verdelho
Hastings River’s cellar door facilities, music events, regional restaurants, coastal attractions and great climate are serving to build interest in the local wine industry.
Great place to relax and enjoy a few cold beers on a hot day. 🙂
Vintage cars in Port Macquarie
Everybody loves these old cars.
Love the colour
Certainly not the original colour.
Luxury camper van
On the way to Port Macquarie we saw this luxury vehicle in Coffs Harbour.
My brother Warren lives in Port Macquarie
Warren has lived & worked in Port Macquarie for over 20 years, he & his wife Kerry raised four great children who are now having children of their own. The Herd family has grown incredibly over the last 50 years, I have put a lot of the family history in a post called Following the Herd. My uncle Allan Herd also lived in Port Macquarie for many years, he passed away at the age of 95 in July 2012, his story as a soldier in WW2 is the most dramatic event in our family history, it’s a tale worth reading.
My lovely niece Laura & Jordan Millar.
Laura grew up in Port Macquarie, she is a talented singer/song writer. Here she is with her boyfriend Jordan Millar at The Fig in Port Macquarie.
Family & friends
Three brothers, Warren, Ian, David with Kerry and Chris enjoy dinner in Port Macquarie.
The Wall of China restaurant
Very good Chinese food at this popular restaurant.
Classic council sign
Here is a classic council sign in Port Macquarie on the NSW coast.A friend of mine who works for Trowbridge council in Wiltshire in the U.K. arranged for a couple of these to be erected in Trowbridge, after a couple of months and numerous complaints from the public they took them down.
And I thought the Pommies had a sense of humour.
Helen Gillies
Helen arrived in Port Macquarie in 1833 after being convicted for stealing in Glasgow and shipped to Australia. Helen was my grandfather’s grandmother, she was 4′ 11″ tall. 🙂
Records found in the Old Courthouse in October 1998
Jordan Miller & Laura Bell Herd at the Fig.
Thanks for visiting my Port Macquarie coastal village photo blog.
Towns on the NSW coast are really worth visiting, starting 80 kilometres north of Sydney we have Ettalong on the Central coast. This small town has so many wonderful memories for me as it was the place my family spent the Xmas holidays from when I was a small baby until I was a teenager. In those days the road was quite dangerous and wound around the mountains like a snake around a pole. The journey in those days took about 2.5 hours, now it’s just over an hour on the motorway.
Ettalong in 1953
Here I am at 10 years of age with young brother Warren and my grandmother Nan Tippett. Here is somewhere to stay in Ettalong with magnificent views over the water, the Tantra apartments.
Terrigal
Thirty minutes further north and a little more upmarket is Terrigal, another very popular holiday destination. Terrigal was first settled in 1826 by European Settler John Gray, who called his property Tarrygal, after the indigenous Aboriginal place name, signifying ‘place of little birds’. The town’s long beach is highly popular with tourists.
My favourite NSW coastal town, 400 kilometres north of Sydney, in fact my Australian residential address is here at my brother’s home. Warren has lived here for over 20 years and I always visit when I am in Australia.
Port Macquarie was first visited by Europeans in 1818 when John Oxley reached the Pacific Ocean from the interior, after his journey to explore inland New South Wales. He named the location after the Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie.
Seaside Towns NSW Coast Australia
Port Macquarie is a retirement destination, known for its extensive beaches and waterways. The town is also known for its koala population, being the home to the Billabong Koala Park, and the Koala Preservation Society’s Koala Hospital, caring for koalas injured through bushfire, dog attacks and collisions with vehicles.
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Coffs Harbour
Coffs Harbour is located on the north coast of New South Wales about 540 km north of Sydney, and 390 km south of Brisbane. Coffs Harbour is one of many regional cities along the Pacific Highway between Newcastle and TheGold Coast.
Seaside Towns NSW Coast Australia
The Observatory hotel is just a short walk to several restaurants and cafes, the only downside is being woken early in the morning when the first train stops at the station 50 meters in front of the hotel.
Yamba Clarence River NSW Coast has a population of just over 6,000, which tends to triple in the holiday season. The economy is based on tourism & fishing.
Iluka at the mouth of the Clarence River.
Iluka is a small village at the mouth of the Clarence River on the NSW coast. It is situated directly across the river from the resort town of Yamba. At the 2006 census, Iluka had a population of 1,739 people. The town’s name is derived from an aboriginal word meaning “near the sea”. It has long beaches on the ocean side of the river. It is reached by turning off the Pacific Highway approximately 20 kilometres north of Maclean. As Iluka is a popular tourist destination its population increases slightly in the holiday season with many Gold Coasters in the summer and Victorians in the winter.
Byron Bay
Byron Bay is a beach-side town located in the far-north-eastern corner of the state of New South Wales. It is located 772 kilometres north of Sydney and 165 kilometres south of Brisbane. The history of Europeans in Byron Bay began in 1770, when Captain James Cook found a safe anchorage and named Cape Byron after John Byron.
It is a resort popular with both domestic and international tourists, including backpackers, who travel along the Australian coast; the scenery also attracts skydivers. The area is also noted for its wildlife, with the whale watching industry a significant contributor to the local economy.
Byron Bay
Only a 60 drive from where I lived in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast, I would occasionally drive down for lunch at the famous pub near the beach. One of the great Seaside Towns NSW Coast Australia.
Byron Bay lighthouse NSW coast
Australia’s most easterly point.
Magnificent deserted beach near Byron Bay
Miles of deserted beaches are all along this part of the coast. I intend to live somewhere along this coast around 2022. Hopefully I will find a little bolt hole where I can live in peace until I die. 🙂
Kingscliff Northern Rivers Coast NSW
A fairly typical coastal town with lots of coffee shops, tourists & terrific beaches.
Point Danger NSW coast
Port Danger is on the border of New South Wales and Queensland. It’s a very popular location for surfers.
Port Danger
Thanks for visiting my Seaside Towns NSW Coast Australia photo blog, it certainly is one of the world’s great coastlines.
You can spend a very interesting hour or so checking out the Painted Rock Art Port Macquarie.
Apologies for the fuzzy photo, but you get the picture. 🙂
