Coffs Harbour

On Monday, the day after my trip to Stanwell Park and the Royal National Park with Peter and Clare, I went for an interview with a company called “Face-to-face”. They sell charity on the streets of Sydney and other Australian cities: they are “chuggers” in other words. I was one of three attending the interview, the other two being an Irishman and a South African woman. The woman who interviewed had a personality verging on nauseating. It was probably this interview that convinced me that fruit picking was a necessary evil.

So on Tuesday I got on the 7 o’clock train going north. A Canadian couple in my room mentioned Coffs Harbour and I thought that would be a good start on my way to far-off Bundaberg.

As it turned out, Coffs Harbour was as far as the train was going that day. By a particularly luckless coincidence Coffs Harbour received 440mm of rain in the hours surrounding my arrival and made the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. I was stranded at the train station in the midst of a downpour that they receive only once every hundred years.

After an hour of waiting I made a run for it and, after navigating almost knee-deep water on some of the roads, made it to the hostel, soaking wet. (The waterproof cover for my bag, previously untested, proved efficient and my laptop is still alive.)

The owners of the hostel, a small and cosy place called Aussietel (motto: Fun in the Sun), weren’t in the slightest bit worried about the state of my laptop. They had their own problems: their hostel was flooded.

Submerged hammer toes in the dorm

Thanks to the rain, there was no way I could leave CH on Wednesday as planned. The train tracks were still covered by debris, some of the highways were still closed and it was still raining. I was able, however, to book a bus leaving at 5 o’clock on Thursday morning to Bundaberg via Brisbane.

On Wednesday afternoon the rain subsided for a while and I went down to the harbour and found it to be a rather paltry structure.

Flooded park next to the harbour

The harbour wall battered by the rough ocean

The harbour itself on that grey day