Nambucca Heads, NSW.

On one of our roadtrips we stayed the night in a cabin at the White Albatross Holiday Park in Nambucca Heads. This is a pet friendly caravan park with loads of facilities for a family holiday. It was also perfect for our one-nighter because of its beautiful location only 5 km off the Pacific Highway.

White Albatross Holiday Park

We settled in to our cabin and went for an afternoon walk along the breakwall to Wellington Rock.

From there we crossed over the headland to Shelly Beach. On the way we saw an adult Rainbow Bee-eater feeding a younger bird but they keep moving around and we couldn't get a close-up.

Rainbow Bee-eaters

Shelly Beach

From Shelly Beach we climbed up to Parkes Street where there are a couple of lookouts with great views back over the caravan park.

View over White Albatross Holiday Park

From Parkes Street we dropped down to a short mangrove boardwalk off Wellington Drive and completed the loop back to the caravan park in time to do a few laps in the pool before dark. Of course I had to try out the water slide a few times because its good to keep in touch with your inner child. There is also a children's swimming pool and water play area at the White Albatross.

The pool is long enough to do laps.

I gave this slide a workout.

The next morning we were up bright and early to catch the sunrise on the breakwater.

This Darter was also keen to catch the rising sun.

Sun rising at Wellington Rock, Nambucca Heads.

We thought we'ed have another go at getting a Rainbow Bee-eater photo and we found that there were quite a few birds around in the early morning. We could hear a Pheasant Coucal calling and finally we spotted it calling from a bare tree but it wouldn't come out for a photo. The Rainbow Bee-eaters were a little more co-operative.

Pheasant Coucal

Laughing Kookaburra

Rainbow Bee-eater

Silvereye

On our way out of Nambucca Heads we made a detour to a small walking trail to have a look at an interesting environmental landscape called an ephemeral entranced lagoon. The carpark can be found approximately where Bemago Street becomes Swimming Creek Road. There is signage on the short walk to the ocean explaining the ephemeral entranced lagoon environment. Incidentally, not far from here is the very popular, pet friendly, Big 4 Nambucca Beach Holiday Park.

When we got out of the car we noticed that there was a male Regent Honeyeater moving around the trees lining the carpark. We spent some time trying to get a photo of him to no avail. A local excitedly told us that there was a Rainbow Bee-eater on the walk. We said we were trying to get a photo of the Regent Bower bird and he dismissively said they were common around there and we really should hurry along to get a photo of the Bee-eater. Where we live Rainbow Bee-eaters are seasonally quite common. It just goes to show that one persons oyster is another persons pearl. To this day we have still not taken a photo of an adult male Regent Bower bird.

The carpark turned out to be quite a good birding spot. We saw a Dollarbird overhead and several Variegated Fairy-wrens fluttering about.

Dollarbird

Nambucca Heads is a lovely coastal area and we are glad we stopped in on our roadtrip.