Expectation And Reality: Hyams Beach To Erowal Bay By Sea Kayak

There is a pod of dolphins swimming by the white sand beach as we pack our sea kayaks for a two day trip. Very quickly, an equal sized pod of humans gathers to watch and photograph. It is mid-winter, mid-week, the nearby streets are lined with “no overnight parking” signs, this place must be the ultimate shit show in mid-summer during school holidays. Close enough to Sydney to garner hordes of day trippers who don’t mind driving a few hours each way to walk half an hour and then gather dust in the local cafes.

I have only paddled this particular section of coast once before and that was on a day when the swell was larger rather than smaller and after almost 30 kilometre of rebound we were all glad to get into more sheltered waters.

The further we paddled from the beach, the stronger the wind became until we had a decent following sea and gusty winds pushing us along. I was glad to have a paddle jacket on but a bit nonplussed by conditions as, despite the strong wind warning, I had not expected quite such blustery conditions. Expectation is everything. We mentally prepare for the conditions we expect; when a mismatch between expectation and reality occurs it takes even the most mentally flexible among us a moment or two to revise our expectations.

We had a short stop on a sheltered beach during which time I endeavoured to switch from my wing blade to a flat blade (much better for bracing), but, owing to poor maintenance on my part I was unable to assemble my flat blade. Turns out we were soon out of the wind and my wing blade was a reasonable choice.

Passing between Bowen Island and Governor Head we turned south and were almost immediately sheltered from the wind. This is a spectacular section of coast to paddle. Big cliffs, waterfalls over the cliffs, caves ranging in size from large to less than a paddle width wide, there is lots to see and we took our time paddling south. At Stony Creek we slipped in through the reef to the sheltered little bay. A lovely spot to stop and rest a moment. At Steamers Beach, there was barely a wave so we landed for a short break. This beach is usually a nasty landing spot with a big shore dump, so it was nice to land for no other reason than we could.

One final section of cliffs with some big caves followed before we rounded St Georges Head and straight into a strong headwind. At times like these, I sometimes wonder if we are making any progress at all, but, after about half an hour, we were able to turn north and paddle with the wind across our boats and suddenly paddling was so much easier. We quickly found a tiny beach to land on and settled ourselves for a spectacular sunset over the Budawang mountains.

Next morning, the wind was still blowing light WNW but by the time we had packed up and left camp, it was essentially calm. We wandered north along a series of bays and headlands until three bigger beaches – Summercloud Cove, Mary Cove and Cave Beach – and then a long paddle west along Bherewerre Beach to the bar at Sussex Inlet.

I have had easy entrances to Sussex Inlet and harrowing entrances that were instructive but painful. On this particular day, there was not even a riffle over the bar and a gentle current was running north up the inlet towards St Georges Basin. We had a break on the north side of the bar enjoying the winter sunshine and then paddled six kilometres north up the inlet to St Georges Basin. We could just see Erowal Bay, 7 or 8 kilometres away up an eastern arm of the big shallow bay, so just over an hour’s paddling and the trip was at an end.

Photos courtesy of DB.