The Sunday Paddles: Surfing by the Tollgate Islands

“Keep an eye on the weather” Doug said as we parted at Snapper Island. We had been surfing on the Clyde River bar. The conditions were better than you might expect for a primarily NE swell, and a high and rising tide, but, if you got the waves right, the runs were long.

Robbie and I headed out to the Tollgate Islands. By the time we got there, a big black cloud bank had spread out all the way to the Tollgates. Robbie and I paddled through the gap and rapidly back to shore. A half kilometre out we could hear thunder rumbling. I got home just as the storm moved in.

First 40 of the New Year

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. General George Patton.

I needed a rest day. Not my body this time but my mind. In the contest between two introverts and one extravert, the extravert wins. Every time. The house was blissfully quiet and I got all the little jobs that had added up over the week done.

Doug had done his long day for the week on Tuesday, it was Friday when I did mine. The winds were light all day with just a 10 knot easterly building later in the day. The swell was up; in the two to three metre range with some long period waves coming through. It was just after 6:30 am when I started paddling with no real idea where I was heading. I headed north to Snapper Island and then, because the tide was very high and it is a long time since I have done this, I went all the way up Cullendulla Creek. There were a lot of fish jumping.

East then, past the dumping surf on Long Beach, threading my way through a rock passage between Maloneys and Long Beaches, only possible at the highest tide. At Reef Point, the swell was breaking and I had to put on some power to spear over the bigger waves and into Maloneys Beach where I ate a rather nasty left over chicken burger (not recommended). Out past Three Isle Point and North Head and on towards Oakey Beach, but I was getting queasy; the sea had that oily, greasy, roiling greyness where sky and sea are indistinguishable so I turned about and headed south to the Tollgate Islands where I ate something slightly less disgusting but not actually good tasting (cottage cheese and banana) breaking my own rule to never become a sea kayaker who eats bananas.

South again to Black Rock and starting to feel I desperately needed a cup of tea. Circuit Beach had a spilling wave and not too many people so I landed there and enjoyed tea out of a plastic mug. On the move again after 10 minutes heading back north following the shore. Lots of swimmers and sun-bathers at Surf Beach, a few less at Denhams Beach, and then only three or four at Sunshine Cove. My watch was stubbornly one kilometre shy. Doug would stop, but I think the power of training is in not stopping when you desperately want to, so I thought about Steve Bechtel’s latest training article, and turned and paddled 500 metres out to sea, and then back again.

J's Big South Coast Adventure

I made this map for J. The kilometres may be a bit off. J’s Garmin watch steadfastly recorded about two kilometres less than my watch on every outing. On the first afternoon of J’s arrival, we walked just 2.5 kilometres, a little loop walk that takes in a beach, a headland, and a bridge over a creek.

Next day I drove us up to the Dam Loop near the Botanic Gardens. We walked around the Dam Loop. The mountain bike trails would have been hopping but we only saw two young blokes who had randomly picked a “blue loop” from TrailForks and ended up on the Dam Loop which is all but abandoned by mountain bikers these days – with good reason - there were half a dozen trees down, the track is eroded and covered in sticks and even logs. After the loop, we went into the Botanic Gardens for a beverage at the cafe and then with a handy laminated map the volunteer at the counter gave me we walked around all six of the giant trees in the Gardens. I had remembered the spotted gum at the far southeastern end of the Gardens as bigger than it was in life. Like being a child and finding adults tall then growing up and realising some adults are actually quite short.

On Monday, we all three drove down to McKenzies Beach to walk the Munjip Track. I had planned for us to take the bus – I love public transport and I love taking the bus to walk home – but J’s morning routine seems to be much longer than ours and I wasn’t sure we would make the first bus. As it was a public holiday, the service was pretty sporadic. McKenzies Beach used to be a great surf beach but all the east coast lows have steepened the beach so much that it’s almost always a shore dump now. It was a glorious day on the Munjip Track and we did all the side tracks to lookouts. At Mosquito Bay we discovered we were rather hungry so we had lunch (thanks for the burgers J!) at the cafe. It was busy. I will never understand how or why people will drive down from their holiday home to wait half an hour for someone to make a middling burger when you could make ten burgers that are more delicious for the same price at home in half the time. But, as my grandma used to say “there’s nowt so queer as folk.”

Tuesday, I did weight training before we cycled into town, over the bridge and around the shore to the Cullendulla Nature Reserve and the mangrove boardwalk. I thought this would be a rest day for J after the previous two days, but, given her Garmin body battery was 9 when we got home and she wrote: “up and down hills,” for the first and last half hour even though there aren’t really any hills!

Our longest walk, at six hours, was from Cookies Beach to Maloneys Beach. J and I drove to Cookies Beach (so many cars!) and walked to Maloneys Beach while Doug drove to Maloneys Beach and walked north. We did all the lookouts, of course, but our pace was quite slow so don’t be deterred by the time taken.

Split Rock for Christmas 2025

Christmas Day 2025 and, as usual, we are in the middle of a paddling training cycle, so I felt an extra bit of delight when I saw that the weather would be sunny but cool (overnight lows near zero) around Namadgi National Park. That meant, instead of doing an overnight paddle (I get weary of paddling during long training cycles) we could do something different and go for an overnight walk.

Namadgi National Park has become one of our go-to bushwalking locations. The driving, as driving goes, is pretty painless. Just a bit over two hours on good roads and we can circumvent most of Canberra. The bush is a bit less dense for whacking than around the Budawangs which has gotten really ferocious since the fires, there is always a peak to bushwack up, pretty good camping, water, and the new bonus, no ticks!

In all the walks I’ve done around Namadgi National Park, I’ve never driven up the Orroral Valley to the site of the old tracking station. The interpretive signage around the picnic area (on the site of the old tracking station) certainly highlights how much technology has changed in the last few decades.

The Cotter Hut road runs north and climbs steadily to Prairie Dog Creek. It’s not particularly pleasant walking as the road is hard underfoot, but after 5 or 6 kilometres the Australian Alps Waking Track (AAWT) splits off and head west descending a short distance to Sawpit Creek and then climbing about 200 metres to Cotter Gap. The last time we walked in to Cotter Gap we had come from Honeysuckle Campground on the far (NE) side of Legoland Ridge. That day, three years ago, we covered 20 kilometres and accumulated 900 metres of elevation gain on the first day of a three day trip, but, I’m not sure it felt any harder than the relatively modest 12 kilometres and roughly 600 metres of gain we did on Christmas Day. It turns out that walking up and down steep climbing trails with a climbing pack probably does keep you somewhat fit for backpacking.

About a kilometre downhill from Cotter Gap the track crosses the start of Pond Creek and there are a few good campsites scattered in the forest. We opted for the best one, just off the track and set among a couple of large boulders with a grassy open tent area. I think this is a better camp than we had three years previously when we camped down at Pond Creek Flats. If you are continuing west to the Bimberi Range there are unlimited good campsites down at the Cotter River Valley only a couple of kilometres downhill from Pond Creek Flats.

It was definitely time for tea and lunch. We had our new Primus canister stove with us, an upgrade from the last cheapo model which started to leak irreparably last year. With a wind guard, it was very quick to boil water. Another piece of technology which has improved a lot of the last couple of decades and, even I now think, is a reasonable replacement for the trusted liquid fuel MSR stoves that we used for decades. The beauty of MSR liquid fuel stoves, of course, was their ability to burn any fuel (including diesel or kerosene – both very stinky) and the repair them in the field if you had the parts, and you could always buy the parts. The downside, of course, is the fuss and bother of priming them and the fact that in recent years the spare parts have become as costly as a new stove.

Anyway, after tea and lunch we stashed our spare gear under a rock and set off for Split Rock. Split Rock is not named on the map but if you are at Pond Creek and look south you can’t miss it. Two tall granite tors on the ridge above. The bush was rather thick! It took us almost 1.5 hours to gain just under 300 metres in elevation over the kilometre or so to the top. That’s not fast! Near the top, you have to scramble around some big boulders but the split tors are pretty obvious and you can walk right through them. If these tors were more accessible, and had some bolts, they would provide fantastic climbing as the granite is really clean, featured and solid! I could not find any evidence on the internet of anyone climbing to the top but lots of things don’t make it onto the internet.

There is a rock balcony overlooking the two tors and the valley below and we sat here for a bit admiring the view. An hour down and back to camp. We took a slightly different route of the top which was more than slightly worse than the way up!

We had frost overnight which is an interesting concept in Australia in late December. The next day we had planned to walk further west along the AAWT and bushwack up Coronet Peak. But ideas made in the comfort of ones home don’t always translate to actions in the field. Our legs had felt tired and stiff the previous evening and, disappointingly, you have to lose 200 metres of elevation to get to the base of the bushwack up Coronet Peak. Two hundred metres which we would have to regain on the way out and Coronet Peak is 100 metres lower than Split Rock!

When we made coffee in the morning, which I enjoyed in the tent, we decided against Coronet Peak. After all, it was Christmas. Accordingly, we had two big mugs of coffee in the morning before packing up and walking out. Just before the Cotter Hut road crosses James Creek, we took an old vehicle track down to the trail that runs north up the Orroral River valley. This is pleasant open walking with views up and down the valley and much softer on the feet than the Cotter Hut road. Where the track joins the Link Track which comes over from Honeysuckle campground, I walked across open grasslands back to the picnic area while Doug followed the old roads. More tea and lunch at the picnic ground. We encountered a surprising number of people walking into Bimberi Peak from the east. I had though most folk would go in from the west (Pocket Saddle Road) which is much shorter and easily day tripped.

Another good Namadgi trip and, although we did not climb two peaks as planned, we now have a reason to go back.

That Speed Graph

I made the mistake of looking at my watch. The news was not good. Our speed had been gradually dropping, and, as we paddled past Jimmies Island to Burrewarra Point and bashed into a developing sea, a southerly swell, and a building wind, our average speed was around five kilometres an hour! Yikes. After two hours of paddling we turned around and our speed immediately doubled!

A super fun run back catching lots of runners. We took a break on Lilli Pilli beach ‘cos I was running out of gas. It’s not often that training days as this much fun.

The Perpetual Panic

We were supposed to paddle out to Montague Island today for my usual Sunday paddle, instead we ambled down the coast to Jimmies Island and did about 21 kilometres (not that much less than a Montague Island circumnavigation trip) and shot some video of our forward strokes. I cancelled the Montague Island trip at the last moment because the BOM weather page had activated the panic warning. This time for large hail, thunderstorms, flash flooding and violent storms. We did get a storm on Saturday evening which lasted for a couple of hours and dropped a mere, but very welcome, 20 mm of rain. There was lots of thunder, no hail and little wind, but it did rain, which I guess, in the new reality is cause for panic.

The new BOM website, that cost us all up about $100 million, always has a panic alert. I don’t remember this from the old website, but perhaps for a $100 million you get an unlimited number of panic alerts. We’ve had about five heat wave alerts already this summer and the temperature has barely cracked 30 degrees Celsius. In summer, in Australia. I did my first rolling practice day on Friday because it was the first day it was actually warm enough to spend a reasonable amount of time upside down in a kayak without having to put a full wet-suit on. As an aside, I could roll. What joy. Each summer, after a winter of not rolling, I wonder if I’ll still be able to roll.

Anyway, we got a light spittle of rain today, but no thunder, no wind, no hail, no flash flooding, nothing. But, not to worry, the BOM website still managed to crank out two warnings for us today: a heat wave warning – our high temperature today was 24 degrees Celsius – and a strong wind warning – the maximum wind speed today at Montague Island was 10 knots. Whew, I’m glad I panicked.

Death in the Jungle

There’s a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle. Mark Twight.

Mark Twight coined this evocative phrase in his Gym Jones days when training high level athletes for dangerous pursuits. The answer or attribute that we seek is, in one environment a panacea and, in another a death wish. This is where the left is now. Stuck between solutions and judgements, with nowhere to go, and no ability to course correct.

When you join the cult, you must accept all the edicts of the cult, sometimes, as in the case of Jonestown, to the detriment of your own life, at other times to the detriment of the lives of others. After two years of weekly protests at a cost, in excess of $25 million in Melbourne alone, Australia has had it’s worst gun massacre since Port Arthur in 1996. Social cohesion, in this primarily multi-cultural society is looking a little ragged around the edges. More laws are coming, more sanctions on what people can and can’t say, more attempts to hold together disparate groups that, if history bears any witness, may be hard to hold together.

The left, who gaslit us after the Covid pandemic by claiming no-one was forced to get a vaccination, who promote medical and surgical castration as a cure for the social contagion of gender dysphoria, now want us to believe that no-one was radicalised by weekly marches behind banners decrying a genocide. “The two gunmen …. did not march for peace,” a leftist writer claimed in The Shot even though, earlier this year, the ABC uncovered evidence that radicals were using the marches to find recruits. Emotional people in large crowds are ripe for conversion, something we should all remember from the Billy Graham years.

No-one is responsible for these killings except the two men who shot the bullets but it is disingenuous of the left to pretend that hundreds of rallies over the course of multiple years encompassing Australia’s most populous cities did not influence anyone. The modern left offers atheists the salvation of religion free morality, the ethical high ground on all issues, and the heady euphoria of universal empathy. You just have to be careful what you believe because, before you realise it, the chalice has been poisoned and you are dying in a jungle of your own construction.