Minnie Water, Yuraygir National Park: Cafe of Knowledge

We started with an early morning cooked breakfast, savoured on a picnic bench overlooking the expansive bay. After saying goodbye to Olive’s friends, we headed to Yamba, the town just across the river. Unfortunately there is no bridge, and it was nearly an hour’s drive to loop back out to the pacific highway and back again to the coast. Yamba is famous for freshly caught prawns and oysters, however the options were not impressive at the Fisherman’s Co-op, so we gave it a miss. We had a quick drive through the pretty town and a look at the small beach, which was busy with surf club events as it was Sunday morning. Only a few kms south was the tiny town of Angourie, and the main attraction here was the Blue and Green rock pools, created when an old rock quarry was filled with water. It was not hot enough for us to swim, though a bunch of young boys came along and entertained us with jumps off the rocks into the water. After buying lunch at the café, practically the only shop in town, we drove to Minnie Water a little further along the coast. We stopped for a coffee on a lonely seat on a hill, next to the ‘Tree of Knowledge’. We camped nearby, next to the beach in the Yuraygir National Park. At dusk when the tide was right out, we went for a romantic walk along the beach. For the second time on this trip we had the luxury of a campfire, but as usual we were too tired to make the most of it.