Coraki Country - Guest Post

Feeding Isabella at Coroki Hotel.

An old country singer.

Out the back of the hotel.

Saturday saw us scanning through our local paper, The Northern Star, to see what was on throughout the region.
Happily, the Evans Head markets were on so we bundled the gang off at the unexpectedly early hour of 9am and looked through the surprisingly small array of stalls between the surf club and the skate park. Looking for shelter for Isabella, we veered off through the scrub along a dirt track that came out in the middle of the caravan park and then from there to the Oak Street shops.
The shops were very busy, relatively speaking, due to the large number of people planning on heading home after the school holidays. You could almost feel the sense of last minute preparations along with a touch of sadness that they were ending their holidays – almost always too soon.
The hunt for Isabella’s shelter led us to the florist-cum-baby wear shop and a gorgeous little pink hat. After a brief morning tea at Pippy’s, we hit the road for Coraki – a town of about 500 people inland by about 25kms – where we had seen a Country Music afternoon at the Coraki Hotel. Goodness me.
The bar lady was lovely and when I ordered two lemonades for Josh and Sammy, leant over the bar and asked if she could give me some advice. Curious, I leaned forward and was told that it was cheaper to buy a bottle of lemonade and she would keep it in the fridge for us till it was empty. And the price for the family shout? $8!
The photos tell a story all in themselves but it was a lovely few hours spent in the company of a couple of dozen local pensioners. The food was good country fare and amazingly good value. Angie had gone up to pay while I got the drinks and happily handed over $10 for what she believed was two sausage sandwiches and two steak sandwiches – about the price you’d pay at the canteens at early morning kids sports days. When it came time to eat, however, there was a full on buffet with mountains of locally produced food and I got into trouble from Angie for taking more food than we had “paid” for. I promised to make amends but was rebuffed by the organising lady who said, “That’s the price dear”. They were sad when we left as I think we brought the average age down by about half!

Coraki Hotel was having a music festival.

From there it’s only a 15 minute drive to the big smoke of Lismore and the local Bunnings, Big W and K Mart for a bit of shopping and then home to greet the Coombs clan for dinner.

Out at a local pub for a sing-a-long with the kiddies.