Tapp's Travels

Now we were faced with an amazing array of beaches up the Shoalhaven coast.  Yesterday, we hit the first of the “100 Challenge”, Pebbly Beach – by mistake!  We found it when we overshot the road to North Durras.  The National and State Parks in this region are basically huge forests.

Close up, the bark of these trees is beautiful…

Murramurang National Park is no exception … AND they wanted to charge us for walking to the Beach.  What a nerve!  So we failed the Challenge at the first hurdle.  Probably a good thing because we were never going to be able to visit all of them in two days.   Not even close!

We had selected Milton Country Cottages for the next two nights.   Not too far North.  So we had plenty of time to swerve off the Princes Highway at every available opportunity.   First up was Pretty Beach – but we discovered that that was still in the NP (and still subject to park fees!) so we swung back up the coast to Bawley Point.

Places round here have some great names.  Like Cockwhy, Kioloa, Ulladulla and Mollymook.  And in the last of these there is a headland called Bannister Point.  But, because Rick Stein has a restaurant here, …

… it will be known to us as Bannistein  – a bit like Padstow in Cornwall is now being called Padstein.

On Mollymook Beach, we intercepted a wedding party and persuaded them not to swim here because there were no lifeguards on duty.

There’s going to be a dry cleaning bill though!

Well, you can’t win them all.  Our choice of accommodation at Yatte Yettah was a bit sub-standard.  No!  A lot below par.  The place needed a real good going over.  Money spent and TLC applied.  But Carol our host was very pleasant and helpful.  However, she is clearly tired of the game and about to get out.  The place is suffering badly as a result!  (On the cruise in Myanmar, Paul challenged me to use two specific words in my blog).  I think I’ve just done a bit of “besmirchment” there.  So that’s one of them.  And the other was “intractable”  – so I’ve  snuck that one in too!

Apparently the property is home to a colony of feather-tailed gliders.  Tiny marsupials which have flaps of skin between front and back legs.  When stretched these give the little mouse-like creatures the ability to glide up to 20 metres between trees.  I spent some time with binoculars but as they live 20 metres up in the trees and are only a few cms long, I didn’t see any!  But this is what they look like!

Milton is a lovely little town about ten minutes South of base.  A little touristy and a bit busier than anywhere we had been recently.  This was partly because it was Saturday and a load of Sydney-siders seemed keen to share all these fabulously deserted beaches with us.  And partly because Saturday 2nd March is the date of the Milton Show.  We discovered this as we tried to get to Cupitt’s Winery for a coffee.  No chance – the road was jammed with locals trying to get to see the “chooks, pigs and tractors”.  We gave up and had a very pleasant coffee followed by a lazy lunch at the “Coast” cafe in town.

I’m a bit mixed up on the sequence of beaches – although that doesn’t really matter – but I’m pretty sure we hit a couple more in the afternoon.  I spent a happy few hours trying to drain a coastal lagoon.  I’d made some good headway…

When I came to this sign…

A quarter of a million dollars for having fun on the sands seemed a bit steep – so I was told to “stop mucking about”.

Anyway, as we left Milton Cottages we were recommended to look at Washerwoman’s Beach.  A cute, sheltered little cove.  I say little, but everything is relative!

Now it’s Sunday and the car park is overflowing with at least ten cars – and everyone is doing a line dance in the shallows at the far end of the beach.

Well, bearing in mind that we hadn’t seen this many people on all the beaches we had visited added together – obviously we had to join them.  The dance was called the Stingray Shuffle.  One ray to each person and don’t stand on each others’ “toes”.

They were all over the place – in ankle-deep water.  Fabulous.  OK these folk can share the beach with us so long as they all stay down one end with the rays!

At this stage we didn’t know where we were going to stay.  Glenda had shortlisted two motels about two kms apart as the crow flies, but which turned out to be about a 40 minutes apart by road.

Our coffee stop today was at George’s Basin – we never met George but we did come face to face with his squadron of pelicans.

It was getting significantly more busy by the time we rolled into Vincentia where we had our first view of Jervis Bay.  And Huskisson was positively heaving.  There was no parking space within 25 metres of town centre but heaps within 30 metres!  Just like Brixham  I don’t think!  Lunch at the pub was quite ordinary – but the view was spectacular across the inlet and harbour area and right along Callala Beach which stretches out about three miles ahead.

This photo was taken two minutes walk from the busy main street.  The one thing I like about Australian crowds is that they tend to stick closely together.  Just a hop, skip and a jump away from the epicentre of the crowd the areas are deserted!  Again, just like Brixham, not!  I think it’s an insecurity thing.  They just don’t know where or when they’re going to meet the next person if they wander off.

We rocked into Culburra Beach at tea time and decided to stay at the CB Motel.  Recently renovated, it was a lovely place to stay.  We then went to explore the lighthouse at the Northern end of an extremely breezy beach.  The footpath from the car park was graded as, and I quote:

“EASY – The terrain is relatively flat with few steep sections.  The track surface is generally consolidated gravel/stabilised soil or boardwalk.”

Yeah.  Right!  It started immediately with 57 steep and irregular steps down to the soft sand and grass section joining the terminal hill to the mainland.

The sand turned to loose stones, then to fractured rock with interesting cracks.  The boardwalk over the final boulder section started half way over the boulders and was reached by a single two-foot high step.  The path then went back up another 50 or so irregular steps – but we didn’t.  Give us a nice level walk on the beach any day!

That’s the view from the middle of the bay looking North towards the lighthouse (which we never actually got to see!).  The sea here is the Tasman Ocean and was pretty rough.

Tomorrow we are going to walk back along Callala Beach towards Huskisson.  The sea there is Jervis Bay.  It’s almost totally enclosed and should be much more peaceful.  We’ll get to that later.  But as we are (in real time) going to meet our grandchildren tomorrow, expect delays!

PLEASE READ THE FLOLOWNIG:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.

Ipmresvie, ins’t it?