Burrill Lake To Lake Tabourie The Ocean Route

A couple of years ago, Doug and I walked from Dolphin Point, just south of Ulladulla to Bawley Point using bush tracks, rock platforms and beaches. That was the first time I had actually seen Burrill Lake bar, although I have, of course, passed by Burrill Lake dozens and dozens of times. Given that I have paddled every permanently open, and some infrequently opened bars between Jervis Bay and Dalmeny, and I started to think that one day, just for something slightly different to do, I should paddle Burrill Lake bar.

Sunday was forecast to have moderate winds and a low swell, so three of us launched from a small park in the community of Kings Point, half way up Burrill Lake and, paddled south to the long snaking Burrill Inlet. Out of an abundance of caution, I put my helmet and nose plug on, but paddling out the bar was definitely a non-event as a good channel can be followed slightly north and a rip current swiftly assists in gaining the ocean.

There is about three kilometres of rocky headlands south of Dolphin Point which we paddled past increasingly feeling the impact of some gusty winds. Winds which were coming from the southwest instead of the northwest as forecast. At Lagoon Head, the last headland before 4.5 kilometre long Wairo Beach, we got hit by the full impact of the southwest wind which was certainly gusting to 20 knots, if not higher. Although this is an off-shore wind, the wind was so strong that even a couple of hundred metres off the beach a small sea was developing.

We plugged away south along Wairo Beach until we got to Tabourie Point where we landed in a dumping wave and carried the kayaks about 100 metres until we could launch them back into the 30 centimetre deep water of Tabourie Creek. With a strengthening wind, we paddled north to the highway bridge and out into Lake Tabourie which is a quiet, reed fringed and shallow lake. By this time, it was feeling well past lunch time, so we paddled back to where we had left a car at a small park in the community of Lake Tabourie. The wind was so strong, that it blew Doug’s kayak off the stools I had placed it on to rinse off the salt water.

Dolphin Days

From Black Rock, I pointed the kayak north, and looking into a rainbow of different greys, I paddled north to the Tollgate Islands, around the east side, and, with a wave behind me, I slid into the gap between North and South Tollgate Island and into the clear, sheltered and calm water. A shirtless bloke was lazing on the front of a boat moored near the north island, and he looked at me curiously. “Where had I come from, where was I going,” and what was an old lady doing out here by herself in such a small craft?

An exchange of pleasantries, and then I headed north again, passing a lone seal sleeping by some rocks and over to Three Isle Point, where I turned to follow the coastline west. The northeasterly wind was slowly ticking up, but close in, I was sheltered. I coasted over the reef near Archeron Ledge, the water as clear as I’ve ever seen it around here and continued west hugging the shore. I was increasingly feeling cramped, and my upper back and core muscles were sore and tight from some weight training earlier in the morning.

My endlessly chattering brain had been nattering at me since leaving my home bay, “just paddle minimums¹, don’t push too hard, why not go home now and have a hot shower and a meal, maybe stop and rest for a bit….” On and on and on. As I got near Cullendulla Creek, my pace slowed as I paddled into an outflowing tide, and I was stiff, hungry, a bit chilly, uncomfortable really, and I had done 20 kilometres, so I pulled over for a stretch and a cup of tea from my thermos. Another five kilometres and I would be back.

There were dolphins in the channel between Square Head and Snapper Island, the third group I had passed today, and, paddling into my sheltered home bay, I came across another large pod, clearly fishing on one of the reefs, so I sat for a long while, let the boat drift, and watched as they dived and flashed, around the kayak. One came up with a good sized fish tightly held in grinning jaws.

It is not quite a fortnight since our unsuccessful Mother Woila attempt and barely a day has passed when I have not wondered if I have lost for ever the ability to do hard things. But I haven’t, and today was proof. This morning, with stiff overworked muscles from four days of rock climbing, strength training, trail running and now paddling, I got out of bed in the dark, did my training and chores, packed the kayak and trolleyed the boat to the beach, paddled out solo onto the ocean, and did my planned training not because it was comfortable or easy, but because I vowed I would.

1My mostly official minimum paddle distance is 20 kilometres.

$1:20: Headlands Trail Update

Getting old is like going to hospital, only the fittest will survive, and there are few concrete benefits, except for the NSW Seniors Card. Obviously, I look old for my age as I have spent years replying “Sadly no” when asked if I have a seniors card. Now that I finally have a seniors card I am happy to use it to make even more inexpensive our already fantastic local transit system. $1:20. That’s what it cost me to get dropped off on the final hill above McKenzies Beach at the southern end of the Headlands Walking Trail.

Last time I walked the route of the trail (January 2023), much work remained to be done, especially along the southern section. In fact, it was impossible to get around Malua Headland as there was no track in one section and the bush was very thick. Doug, however, had been on the southern part of the route in the last month and had found a slashed route the entire way. It was time to get on the bus and inspect the new track for myself.

The bus driver let me off as close as he could to McKenzies Beach, which was pretty darn close. A good track has been mown and cleared along to Pretty Point Headland. Pretty Point is certainly worth exploring; there are a few trails and look-outs and even some steep and sketchy tracks to small low-tide beaches, but I passed by today and continued heading north and finding that although the descent to Malua Bay is still very steep and slippery, the brush has been cleared back and the trail is clear.

Passing Malua Head, I detoured out the newly cleared trail. I had once staggered up a steep gulch onto this headland a few years ago after getting stuck by impassable gulches while trying to walk from Garden Bay around to Malua Bay at low tide (not possible without swimming a few sections). There was only a very sketchy and overgrown foot pad at that time and I had to ask permission from a householder to exit the headland onto the nearby street as there was no trail around the public land on the headland to Malua Bay Beach. That problem is a thing of the past now as enough new track has been slashed out of the bush to enable easy passage for the remainder of the trail.

South of what Doug and I call “Wimbie Hill”, a new track has been cut leading along a small creek to where a bridge is to be built to enable the walker to cross the lagoon. At present, this is one of a few places where the descents from headlands to bay are a bit on the rustic side. Council is upgrading all these spots, and one can only hope they don’t go too heavy on the safety aspect and keep the character of the track as just that, a track, not a concreted walkway.

Between Denhams Beach and Sunshine Bay, the trail diverts onto residential streets to get around a short section of headland where property boundaries are right at the cliff edge, and along this half kilometre section, I passed a couple of contractors marking out new footpath to connect the trail sections. It’s not clear to me why a walking trail needs bits of paved footpath but likely it is a consequence of our extreme culture of “safetyism.” Of course, we’d all be safer if we were able to walk on uneven ground without falling over, but authorities infrequently think logically.

I peeled off the track at Sunshine Bay and strolled home as I frequently walk the more northerly section which is now pretty much complete. The new stairs installed (not strictly necessary) at the north end of Sunshine Bay opened last week. The entire trail will be about 17 kilometres when finished and is accessible by our great local bus service making one way walks very convenient. It is quite easy, however, to rack up a lot more than 17 kilometres as there are several “hidden” rocky bays accessible via steps and tracks which are also worth exploring. A walker could easily spend a day on the track without even needing to carry lunch which could be purchased at one of the local cafes along the route. How great is that?

Feeling Young Again: Paddling the Kangarutha Coast

The day after we got home from our latest foray into the Deua wilderness, I glanced, as I do virtually every day of my life, at the forecast and saw, on Willy Weather (not my application of choice but a good site for a quick synposis of marine conditions) a period of extraordinarily low swell. Along the Sapphire Coast, the swell was forecast at around half a metre with a five second period. Perfect conditions for a trip that had been festering at the backs of our minds for five or six years: exploring the caves and gauntlets of the coast between Kianinny Bay in the north and Wallagoot Beach to the south.

Our first year in Australia, we walked the Kangarutha Track, a nine kilometre bushwalk through Bournda National Park that wanders along this stunning section of coast. Additionally, we had paddled past numerous times, most recently in May this year, but, most paddle trips along this section of coast have featured significant swell and rebound and we have never explored any of the deep gauntlets or caves that perforate the coast. In particular, we were after two big features, one a large cave facing south east located on the south side of Turingal Head, and a big gauntlet just north of Turingal Rock where two deep and narrow corridors of rock feature a large ships prow rock stack between so that you could paddle in one entrance, paddle behind the rock stack and paddle back out a similar but narrower corridor. A good video can be viewed here. It turns out there are two such features, almost identical except one is longer, deeper and higher than the other.

On Friday, also a low swell day, we launched from Congo and paddled down to Mullimburra Point to meet up with Nick who joined us paddling around to Grey Rocks. The goal was to paddle some of the corridors and gauntlets around Mullimburra Point. We had last paddled these features way back in 2018 when we were lucky enough to find ourselves surrounded by false killer whales on the way back to the launch site. Conditions were excellent and we got through all the slots and gauntlets except for one which had a big rock protruding from the middle as the tide was too low. This is the only gauntlet I missed last time as well.

The main attraction, however, was Saturday, launching from Kianinny Bay and exploring the coast south to Wallagoot Beach. The conditions (0.5 m on the Eden wave buoy) were amazing. We paddled into every cave, grotto, pass through, and gauntlet, including into Wallagoot Gap, where both Doug and I narrowly avoided colliding with rock cliffs. The convoluted coast was every bit as amazing as we thought it would be, the high rock cliffs set off by a deep winter blue sky and clear torquiouse water.

All photos DB.

The Day I Got Old: More Misadventures In The Deau Wilderness

It’s funny, but I can remember the scene almost as if it was yesterday: Doug and I have just crested a high ridge in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia. It is 9.30 pm, the sun has set and pink alpenglow bathes the landscape. A couple of hundred metres below, a few of tents cluster in a meadow surrounded by the jagged rocky and glaciated peaks of the Gold Range. Our camp. We have been on the move for over 16 hours in a quest to climb the striking saw tooth west ridge of Mount Grady, turning back after 10 hours of effort just 100 vertical metres, and about 500 horizontal metres from the summit; but out of time to get off the mountain and traverse the complicated terrain back to camp before dark. As it is, we stumble into camp, our headlamps bobbing and weaving, alerting our companions that we are back, just as full darkness falls. We unlace mountain boots, sink onto spongy alpine meadow, and gladly accept the hot drinks our team mates offer. It has been a glorious day in the mountains, tinged by the regret of failure, but one that I will remember for decades.

Twenty years ago there were so many of those days. Days stacked into weeks, weeks into months, and months inevitably into years. Hundreds of mountains, first ascents and new routes, traverses across entire ranges, following ridges into the sky, and glaciers into the valleys. A never ending parade of partners and plans, maps and air photos, climbing up and skiing down, a life time of wild places, cold frosty mornings, flaming mountain sunsets, and always the push to climb one more mountain, ski one more run, crest the rise of one more ridge, never content, never at rest, the day we returned from the mountains we set about planning the next visit. Failures niggled and nagged, frequently we went back, trying to even a score that never really existed because a mountain is not in competition with a human; there is no final tally that reveals a victor with a series of wins on the one side, losses on the other.

But somewhere along the way, as age creeps up, the burning bright fire of desire dims a little, and then a little more, and one day you realise that this is the year, the month, maybe today is even the single day wherein the knowledge that youth has gone and age has come finally settles deep into your bones, and can no longer be denied.

And so it is, sitting on a ridge overlooking the scraggy top of Mother Woila, the deeply trenched valleys, meandering rivers, and scratched out ragged rock gorges, across the great forested lands of the unroaded wilderness on the western edge of Deua National Park with daylight still in hand, not much daylight, but a few hours yet, the body stops and rests, and the mind follows suit. No longer burning with the white hot phosphorence of youth, the mind no longer has the power to push the body to do what is necessary to reach the summit. The summit itself somehow seems meaningless now. A scrappy scrub covered apex which will afford no better views than this spot here. A meaningless token to say you’ve stood upon the very top, reached after more soul (and body) destroying bush-wacking, not an aesthetic climb, merely a war of attrition won by simply perservering through tangled regrowth and lower even than the elevation at which the trip started.

And yet, failure is still tinged with regret. Not perhaps the regret of one summit missed, but the sad acceptance that no longer will life be written in the great highs and lows of big mountain summits and wild days across vast open spaces, because age and time just do not allow the body to travel as far, as fast, as expediently as before; and, more importantly, the mind loses its crisp, clear, bright, unwavering white desire.

The Deau; for some reason, the place exherts a strong siren pull, and, between other trips and activities, I frequently find myself scouring the topographic map looking for places between the ubitquitious fire roads for some interesting place to explore. In the east, near where I live, I have run the fire roads and followed animal trails to the top of Mount Wamban. I have camped by Oila Creek and climbed Mount Donovan by a long, snaking, and at times, rocky ridge above a deep valley gorge. I’ve traced the route of Burra and Coondella Creeks, visited the waterfalls of Diamond Creek and stood on the rocky summit of Burra Peak. And, I have tried to climb Mother Woila twice, and now, twice failed.

Two years ago, we had turned back from a ridge somewhere above Woila Creek below Euranbene Mountain, wet, cold, but most notably demoralised by the bush-bashing through intense bushfire regrowth. This time, we drove to Dampier Trig, the most common approach to Mother Woila, but found the bush-whacking worse than previous years. The waist high saplings now 3 metres high but still as tightly packed as blades of grass on a lawn. Giant tree trunks, with girths approaching my height, criss cross under the brush, forcing the walker to clamber over one after the other. There are boulders hidden in sedge grass and fern, twisting wiry branches from a thousand fallen tree tops, long strips of tough as cable bark that enraps the body as you attempt to pass. A good pace through this landscape is a kilometre per hour.

On a couple of brief occasions we stumble across a faint old fire trail, the bed as covered with saplings and regrowth as the rest of the landscape, but the foot bed slightly smoother, the upstart vegetation perhaps a half metre lower, but, over the course of the three kilometres to camp, we only manage to follow it for perhaps one or two hundred metres. One of our concerns, however, is ameliorated as we descend a short distance into a shallow valley and find a small pool of water and, for the first time since leaving the car, open ground upon which to erect a tent.

After tea, lunch and setting up camp, we decide to head towards a sharp point of land to the south, above some minor rock bands, but promising a good view to Woila, Tabletop, Scout Hat. This jutting promintory of land is known as Horseshoe Point. It is only 1.5 kilometres from camp, and a consolation because we know there is insufficient daylight for us to climb Mother Woila today.

Buried under three metre high saplings on largely flat ground with the sun low in the sky and almost invisible through layers and layers and layers of virulent regrowth, it is easy to lose your way so we refer constantly to the map on Doug’s phone to confirm our location. Doug reads off a bearing and I locate the direction with our compass, we press on for what seems a long time and a good distance before checking again. The time is long, the distance not. After an hour of or more of work, we reach the 1191 metre high point, which is thick with regrowth, we could be anywhere or nowhere. And suddenly, we just can’t be bothered. We can persist for perhaps another 15 minutes, before needing to turn back to avoid having to travel this terrain in the dark, something we are both loathe to do. Progress is difficult enough with daylight, and will be perilious by the light of a head torch. We turn around and thrash our way back to camp, repeating the map, bearing, compass procedure glad to return, in slightly quicker time to our clear camp spot, large fallen log, small pool of water. The density of the vegetation is like a weight, an oppressive burden carried along with our back packs, and only once we can see the sky again do we feel we can breathe deeply.

We leave too late the next day. It is almost 8 am by the time we set off from camp. First light is an hour earlier, we should have been up in the dark, off at first light, as we did just a few short years ago. The battle begins within 50 metres, map, compass bearing, struggle through the undergrowth, repeat. After an hour, we crest a high point and begin feeling our way down a ridge. Without such visibility obscuring vegetation, this ridge would be relatively easy to follow but buried under scrub, we wander off the ridge to the south and must force a way back onto it. Finally, after a couple of hours we are scrambling down blocky rocks, even these are not scrub free with wiry vegetation poking up. But, for the first time in over a day, we have a view.

The old mature trees on Mother Woila, perhaps a hundred metres above us now, have been torched by the fire, and the regrowth is a thick green fuzz. At this distance, that fuzz looks like nothing but we know it is actually two to three metres high, and dense as a fertilized lawn. We scramble part way down to the col, hesitating constantly, and this is the moment, the very minute of the decade, the month, the year, that I realise that I am old now, and I no longer have the desire to push on past any and all obstacles simply to stand atop another acme, in another place, where the view will be obscured by brush, and the climbing is unrewarding, marked only by grovelling up a loose gully between crumbling rock bands.

We find a seat on a rocky block, sheltered from the winter westerly wind, with weak sun filtering through the trees, and sit, looking out over the deep valleys and hills to the south, all of it burnt in the massive consumptive fires of 2020, marked as the landscape is by a characteristic grey shadow where the grand old trees have died from fire, and now the land is covered by the thick green carpet of saplings which might, one day, many decades, perhaps even a century from now, return to the old growth forest with massive trunked widely spaced eucalypts and open under story ferns, through which a traveller can walk with relative ease.

When finally we return home, after another slow walk back out from camp to our vehicle, I strike the three peaks of Mother Woila, Scout Hat and Table Top from my bucket list of trips. I won’t be going back. The white hot fire of youth has receded too far into the rear view mirror of my life to come back as a driving force to propel me to launch out a third time to try to ascend any of these peaks. The unremitting and unrewarding nature of the travel through the burnt out forest is simply no longer worth the effort. The scrub, an oppressive burden, three hours bumbling, stumbling, struggling travel for every one minute glimpse of mountain top or valley, just no longer worth the price of admission.

Mid Week, Mid Winter Adventures: Hyams Beach to Erowal Bay

There is something special about mid-winter, mid-week sea kayak trips. If you are lucky, you’ll see more whales than people, and the long nights spent outdoors are restful and restorative. When Megan suggested a mid-week lap around St Georges Head, Doug and I were keen, and Fish Killer came down from Canberra to make four paddlers.

We were expecting strong northerlies, and, with gusts, the northeasterly winds topped 20 knots but were mostly a much more moderate 15 knots. But, first, a calm and quiet introduction as we paddled southeast from Hyams Beach to Murrays Beach. The sand around Jervis Bay is bright white and the water clear torquiouse blue; arguably the perfect colors for Instagram posts about #my best life.

Immediately upon paddling through the small gap between Bowen Island and Governor Head we were into rebound. The water is deep right up to the cliffs but that did not diminish the rebound and clapotis and we had bouncy water for the first couple of kilometres. For whatever reason - the currents into Jervis Bay lessen or the coastline drifts slighly southwest - calmer water can be expected the further south you paddle. There was still a good deal of rebound, but the seas ameliorated as we paddled south.

Our last trip along this coast, we had strong westerlies and calm seas and were able to explore all the caves and grottos as we headed south, not so today, with bouncy conditions and a reasonable swell keeping us off the cliffs. There were whales, however, one that dived only a few metres from the bow of my boat and seals, improbably perched on steep rocks east of Steamers Beach.

As we turned St Georges Head into Wreck Bay we were surprised to see a few more whales in the shallow water off Kitties and Whiting Beaches. Every so often, the largest whale would emit a loud groan, not something we had heard before. The whales stayed around the whole time we were there.

The northerly winds continued overnight and the next morning the nine kilometre paddle across Wreck Bay to Sussex Inlet featured beam on conditions. I caught the perfect wave coming into the channel at Sussex Inlet and my speed hit 17 km/hour for the few seconds I was happily riding the wave. There was very little current as we paddled the six kilometres north up Sussex Inlet and a steady headwind as we crossed St Georges Basin to Sanctuary Point and Erowal Bay.

Our timing was perfect as the rain started the minute we had completed the car shuttle and loaded the kayaks.

Left On A Beach

We humans are funny creatures. Our goals and aspirations capture our minds and our souls, and yet, our pursuit of those goals so often devolves into dismal drain circling as we spend all our efforts trying to improve aspects of our lives completely tangential to the capacities needed. Rock climbers, for example, need to be strong, but there is a point where every climber is strong enough and the way forward is to climb (as opposed to lifting more weights) frequently under a variety of circumstances with a spectrum of other climbers. The principal is the same for every skill sport: to improve you must actually do the sport.

Our kayak club has a fairly strict grading system. It kind of works and kind of doesn’t. People are only graded once and the criteria used to define the grading system have gradually got longer and more difficult over the years. Many people who qualified a decade ago would no longer pass the current requirements. Some of that is “scope creep,” some is age, some is deterioration in physical capacity (related to age but not a necessary corollary), and some is lack of targeted practice. A few kayak leaders want to increase, yet again, the difficulty of the grading system. Putting aside that top-down edicts rarely work, there are operational difficulties with implementation and the “solution” ultimately will not solve the problem.

Individuals, but most particularly adults, improve at skill sports because they are motivated by some larger dream or goal to improve. Treating adults like kindergarten children and attempting to enforce skill improvement never works because adults, unlike dependent children can simply walk away. Improvement, however, for many paddlers will come simply from paddling more often, in a greater variety of circumstance with a diverse group of paddlers. A day rock gardening along the coast, will demand a range of paddle strokes not required for an enclosed waters paddle around the harbour. Similarly, a coastal paddle necessitates surf landings. Exposure to these different environments will perforce trigger skill development in a naturalistic setting. If landing on a surf beach is a requirement of a particularly rewarding trip, motivation to learn that skill is high.

There is a point where the acquisition of skill in a vacuum is actually counterproductive. Skill acquisition, for most paddlers, abides by the basic rules of economics. If, for example, I spend all my time and effort (money in economics terms) on skill A, I have no resources left for skill B. The kayaker who spends an inordinate number of days practicing sweep rolls in the river is missing out on the skill development that comes from simply paddling, and risks being left behind on a beach because, while their calm water roll is top notch, they have never actually spent time paddling out through surf breaks.