About a month ago, Viive and Ian decided to go to their favorite beach, and invited us along. Avoca is around two hours north of Sydney, so they picked us up around
10:30 to drive up. On the drive, Viive told us about some very secluded islands we passed on the way. There are no ferries that go there, but people can pay to get a tour through them with the
Riverboat Postman. She said she used to work with someone who lived on one of the islands, he had to row to shore every morning, where his car was parked, and then drive to work. I guess that’s one way to get your morning work-out and is certainly a much different way to live.
Adrienne and I packed a lunch, so when we got to Avoca we ate on the beach. The beaches around Sydney are even better than the ones I grew up with in Holland. Not only are they wonderfully sandy, but there are rocky cliffs to explore, too! We weren’t planning to do any swimming because the water this time of year is chilly, so we spent most of the day exploring the cliffs and tide pools. There were some people out surfing, they were all wearing wetsuits, that got me excited to surf again, but I’ll probably wait until the summer.
Adrienne saying hi from a cliff
The sandstone is pock marked and cracked.
The theme of my Australia blog posts seems to be beauty, and Avoca didn’t disappoint. The sandstone of the cliffs are beautifully colored in reds and yellows, and has been carved into amazing formations. The ground is pock-marked with pits and pools of different sizes. Some are golf ball sized while others are large pools and every size in between. Some are really shallow, only an inch or so deep, others are like a basketball was carved out of the stone, and a few were big and deep. We even saw a couple people soaking in one of them. Many of the pools are big enough to support various forms of life: seaweeds, small fish, sea-snails, anemones, and we even found a sea-slug in one!
Adrienne had fun feeling what the slug was like, and tried to feed it.
The slug was extremely stretchy!
We also spent a considerable amount of time just watching the water as it slammed and swirled into and around the rocks. I always find it relaxing to watch and listen to waves as they crash into the shore. Being on the rocks really gives a sense of the ebb and flow of the ocean, the difference between the crest and trough of a wave is really striking and illustrates the power of the ocean. It also helped me to visualize what a tsunami might really be like. There wouldn’t be a giant cresting wave coming to shore like you would see someone surfing on, but the water level would just get higher and higher.
Here the wave is at its lowest, the water seems to flow away and expose at least 10 feet of the rock.
Then the wave comes in and crests, completely covering the rocks.
In between beaches, we stopped at a gallery for the photographer
Ken Duncan. He takes some really amazing landscape photos. We were in luck: the gallery was running a sale on posters, so we picked up some much needed wall decorations for our flat.
We went down to a different part of the beach once more in the evening, as the light was getting long. The water running amongst the channels it has carved in the sandstone is beautiful.
Since going to Avoca we have been to many more beaches in Cronulla, La Perouse, Manly, and Bondi. We usually leave in the morning and bring a lunch, and have tried to get to many of the beaches during low tide to walk among the rocks and pools. We’ve collected some nice shells, seen a lot of cool sea life, and even found an octopus! Adrienne is thinking about using all the deep purple urchin spines we have collected to make some jewelry. Since we bring lunch, I get to have wonderful picnics (sometimes Adrienne doesn’t eat, or quickly devours her food to get back to searching), basking in the warmth of the sun on some rocks amongst the beautiful cliffs and listening to the ocean. Most of the beaches are in small bays that are on the coast and have sidewalks parallel to the water, along the beaches and cliffs. There are almost always people out running when we’re walking them that make me really jealous of their idyllic running routes.
In Manly, we stayed around one area for most of the day as the tide went out. It’s a really interesting experience, because you don’t really notice the water level going down. You just turn around and realize that where you are was under water just a couple of hours ago. What an amazing phenomenon.
We didn’t spend much time on the beach or in the rocks at Bondi, we were there for the
Sculptures By The Sea event. There were some pretty cool pieces of art scattered along a walk between two beaches in Bondi. I took a lot of pictures, and after editing will post some here.
