The Big Banana

I used to live 6km from the Big Banana but the whole two years I lived in Coffs Harbour I don't think I went there once LOL. I was a young adult - too cool for the Big Banana. We went there a couple of times when I was growing up in Grafton.

I have some more pics to share from our recent holiday. We left Darlington Park after a week with my extended family and called in to the Big Banana on our way out...

ate some cheap bananas...

walked among the bananas...

and watched them make some old fashioned lollies. I'm not a huge lolly fan (give me chocolate instead please!) but I love watching them make old fashioned lollies. See the red and white stripes? They're making a word and it's written backwards. Can you tell what it says?

Here'sa 35kg lolly. Woah. Now that's a lot of sugar...

Here's he's stretching it out (those guys must be strong)...

and here's the finished product. It's wedding candy and the word in the photo above was TRESS.

Tassy wanted to check out the puppet shop too and had a go driving a wolf marionette.

We then left Coffs and headed to Tamworth. We stopped briefly at Bellingen to see inside the Hammond and Wheatley building. I used to love going to Bellingen for the day and would love to have looked around more but it was just the beginning of our drive and Dave was keen to get going. The Hammond and Wheatley building is a gorgeous old department store that was restored maybe 25 years ago. A friend of my parents did lots of carved timber fittings for the restoration. They had some beautiful things for sale too - definitely worth a look if you're near Coffs.

We hit the road again and I wanted to show Dave and Tassy Wollomombi Falls near Armidale. We didn't tell Tassy what we were stopping for. When we got to the lookout she was suitably impressed. "WOAHHHHHH!!!!!!".

And on to Tamworth for the night. We went to an Italian pizza and pasta restaurant for dinner. Can you guess what it was called?

Vespas! There was a little vespa on every table, heaps of vespa posters and ads and a few real vespas around the place. And here we are with the famous golden guitar. YEE HAW!