Brizzy and Coffs Harbor

Saturday, February 18 (cont.): Tayce and Josh left South Bank on a train to visit some other friends in Brisbane so the rest of us were able to fit in the car on the way home. Jade made us a delicious taco salad dinner while Matt mowed the lawn and we spent the rest of the night watching Biggest Loser and chatting.

Sunday, February 19: Sunday Jade and Matt had a large crowd for breakfast. Jade's brother Andrew, his wife Alex, and their brand new baby Savannah moved up to Brisbane and arrived early Sunday morning, but stayed with the Kroks for a few days while they got their house unpacked. Matt's aunt and uncle, Grant and Penny Owen were passing through so they stopped for breakfast and church. So, Jade fed us all breakfast and then we were off to stake conference. Once we got there the chapel was full so we went into one of the classrooms where they were setting up TVs to broadcast the meeting. After 45 minutes with no success broadcasting to our classroom, the unsuccessful IT guys informed us that the chapel didn't even have standing room, so we could either stay in the room and enjoy the A.C. or go home. We went home.

As we got to know Grant and Penny, they asked us what our plans were after Brisbane. We told them we were renting a car and driving to Sydney, and they kindly offered a room at their house in Coffs Harbor. We have either been incredibly lucky to run into the most friendly people while we've been here, or else, everyone in Australia and New Zealand is friendly. We're pretty sure it's the latter. We exchanged numbers with the Owens before they left and planned to stay with them Wednesday night.

After church Matt, Clark, and I went over to Alex and Andrew's apartment to help them get a few things unpacked. Their movers had unloaded all of their stuff a few days earlier so there were just dozens of boxes crowding the whole place. We stayed there for a few hours and were able to get a bit done. It was nice to be able to help out.

Clark and Pacey at church. These two were inseparable.

Jade had stayed home and watched the children and made us yummy enchiladas for dinner then we probably watched Biggest Loser and probably ate some ice blocks.

Monday, February 20: We liked South Bank and the good weather so much that we went back on Monday. Tayce and Josh met us there for a bit with their friends, and we watched some students lined up in pairs walk into the pool, fully clothed. It was some sort of initiation thing, but it was strange and entertaining for a while.

As you can see they had the attention of everyone in the pool.

Andrew and Alex, Josh and Tayce (holding Savannah), Jade and Pacey, Clark and me

She loved having her feet tickled. After Clark tickled the right one, she would stick the left out for tickling. Clark also encouraged the nose picking. Sorry Jade. 

Andrew, Clark, Pacey, Alex, Jade walking along the Brisbane River to the car.

Brisbane Temple, and of course... Clark and Pacey

 After swimming and catching some rays we picked Matt up from work and headed home for a little Dominos for dinner.

Clark and I went to Wooly's with Alex and Andrew to restock the ice blocks and drink we had consumed at the Kroks and bought a bunch of chocolate bars for our nightly Biggest Loser viewing. Appropriate, right?

Tuesday, February 21: South Bank again... haha. But this time it was just clark and me. We went into the city to see a movie and we decided we would cool off before hand. After the movie Jade, who dropped us off earlier came back to pick us up (such a sweetie) and she had dinner for us when we got home. Clark and I might have a hard time taking care of ourselves when we get home because we've been so well looked after while we've been on holiday. It really has been humbling and we haven't been able to express properly our gratitude to everyone who has housed, fed, chauffeured, and entertained us. I feel how I felt around the time we got married when everyone was just giving us awesome things. It was hard to show sufficient gratitude, and that's how we feel now. We want everyone to come visit us in Logan so we can repay their kindness.

For our indulgence while watching Biggest Loser, Jade made an incredible, knock your sox off, Chocolate brownie pudding stuff with ice cream.

Best couch ever. Andrew is demonstrating how comfortable it is.

Wednesday, February 22: As I'm writing this all up, I'm realizing even more now, how much Jade did for us. That being said, Wednesday morning Jade drove Clark and me to the Brisbane airport to pick up our rental car, and then guided us back through the city so we could avoid the toll roads. We were then on our way down the coast towards Sydney. We had until Friday night to return our car to the Sydney airport. We were "relocating" the car for the rental company so we got the car for only $5 a day. Pretty good deal however, we didn't trust ourselves driving on the opposite side of the road, so we got the full coverage insurance, so that upped the price a bit, but it made us feel a lot more comfortable.

About an hour South of Brisbane is Surfers Paradise

Pretty good, eh?

Awesome  lounges that were all along the beachfront

We laid on the beach a little too long and fried ourselves. Then we walked along the beachfront, had some Macca's, went to Wooly's for some road trip grub, then started the 4 more hours to Coffs.

The drive to Coffs was absolutely beautiful. So green and so hilly. We loved it.

When we arrived in Coffs, The Owens had prepared a lovely pork chop dinner for us. Grant is the District President mentioned that he had to eat and run because he was late for his meeting. I said, "Sorry, did we make you late for your meeting?" and he said "oh no.... well.... yes." hahah and we all had a good laugh. After dinner Penny gave us a tour of Coffs because they would both be at work all day the next day and wouldn't be able to show us around. So, she showed us where all the beaches were, which restaurants we could try, and where we could jump off the jetty. When Grant got home from his meetings he had set up a surfing appointment for us the next morning with Garth Mackie. Garth works for a surf shop and was the Branch President of Coffs Harbor when Clark and his family lived in Sydney, so when the Walkers came up for district conferences he took them surfing. The Owens did all of this for us and we barely knew them. But as Penny put it "there are no strangers in the church," and Clark and I are living proof of that.

The Owen's dog, Xena. If you were within two feet of her, she would roll over for you to scratch her belly.  Really cute.

We set the alarm for 6:00 to give us enough time to throw on our swimmers and make the 2 minute drive to the beach by 6:30.

Thursday, February 23: So it turns out Australia is quite nice at 6:30 in the morning. Almost as nice as the Owen's king sized bed. Surfing was fun. I almost made it onto my knees once with a push from Brother Mackie. Clark did a little better than me. My swimming suit has a removable strap that goes around my neck and i've never used it, but it turns out it would have been quite useful for surfing. That made things tricky, but we had a good time. Brother Mackie and his son Noah were sweeties.

I held Brother Mackie's board for the photo so I looked like a real surfer. Clark brought me out my shirt for the last wave or two so I wasn't so concerned about my swimming suit. 

Brother Mackie had to go to work, so we finished up around 8 and headed back to the Owen's house for breakfast, a shower and a nap (we're not accustomed to waking up that early.) After our nap we packed up our stuff, wrote the Owens a thank you note and headed out to explore Coffs Harbor. First we stopped by the Pacific Bay Resort for a photo, because that's where the Walkers used to stay when they went to coffs for holiday/district conference. Then we drove up the banana clad mountain side to an amazing lookout that Penny had told us about.

The Pacific Bay Resort

The Lookout 

Awesome view of Coffs Harbor

There are Banana Plantations all over the hills of Coffs Harbor so on the way back down the mountain we stopped at this little garage for a few "Bananas with 'Apeel'" Unfortunately bananas give me heart burn these days so I didn't eat any, but Clark said they were delicious. 

This one was pretty sweet. 

Reminds me of Mowgli

Right???

After buying the Bananas we headed to see the famous "Big Banana." Australia is known for their big things....

Funny

So we got the experience The Big Banana and ate a peanut and chocolate dipped banana, unfortunately  they weren't selling them from a giant banana stand (shout out to any Arrested Development fans out there.) 

I had one bite of the banana and instantly regretted it. Is it common to get heat burn from bananas? Anybody know?

At The Big Banana they have a sweet candy shop where they make the candy right in front of you. Clark and I were mesmerized for ages. The workers were super cool too. 

This turned into.....

this. And they do it all by hand. No machines. 

After we pulled ourselves away from the candy shop we headed to the jetty at the harbor to do some jumping and swimming.

Clark was doing some serious jumping

I was doing some standard jumping

It was a beautiful day and we had a blast jumping off the jetty and swimming around but as soon as we saw this guy and his buddy, we decided to stay on the jetty

There were two of them and they were legitimately huge. Probably at least 5 feet wide. They were swimming right under the jetty and right under a few swimmers that we had to warn. 

We watched the stingrays until we couldn't see them anymore then jumped back into our car and kept driving south. An hour or so later we stopped at a place called Southwest Rocks to see the southwest rocks.

Then kept driving south until we were about 20 km from Newcastle and found a rest stop where we could spend the night. Clark wanted to pitch our tent at the rest stop but I was a little hesitant because I knew that wasn't allowed in the states, and didn't want to find out at 3:00 in the morning that it wasn't allowed in Australia either.

Clark won, but you can see from his puffy eyes that it wasn't a rewarding victory.

We woke up from a very uncomfortable and very restless nights sleep at about 6 and decided to take down the tent and sleep in the car so people wouldn't see our tent in the daylight. We reclined out seats, pulled our sleeping bags on and slept like rocks for another 3 hours. Clark admitted that I was right, and that we should have slept in the car all night.