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.
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