Wimbie to Oaky Beach and the Tollgates

There was talk of a weekend camp/paddle but an iffy forecast on Sunday meant that instead we settled on a day paddle on Saturday. Only a day or two before the Batemans Bay wave height had been up to 6 metres but fell surprisingly quickly. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it does not. 

 

The Dart surges ahead

We met at Wimbie Beach and headed out to the Tollgate Islands. Mark and I managed to get separated from the other three and Mark had to endure my rant about my Mum's recent medical malpractice adventure. It was lumpy on the east side of the Tollgate Islands with a lot of current. We continued on to North Head Beach where Neil wanted to land. It was easy to land, probably the easiest spot today, and we had lunch there. 

 

East side Tollgate Islands

I thought it was far too early to go back as we would have a tail-wind on the return trip so we continued on around North Head - lumpy - to Oaky Beach. Mark was miles out to sea and straight-lining for New Zealand and we all deafened ourselves blowing our whistles to get his attention. I was too slow to get far enough in to Oaky Beach to see how it would be to land but it looked like quite a shore dump. 

 

Mike passing the Tollgate Islands

Once we got back around North Head, the sails went up. I took the top off my sail but should have left it on as the wind was not as strong as I thought. Both mine and Doug sails were cavitating a lot which was annoying. Mike was trying to teach me to catch the wind waves but every time I speeded up the kayak, the sail cavitated dreadfully and my boat felt like it was getting shaken by a large shark, so the lesson was not a great success.

 

Kayaks and ocean, all you really need in life

Back at the beach, I took the Dart for a spin and found it quite comfortable to sit in, except I could not use the pegs or braces. The boat feels strangely stiff compared to a plastic boat and catches waves exceptionally easily.

Durras to Clear Point Around Point Upright

Here are a two things you need to know about Durras. First, say Duhhras with a long Australian drawl, not Dewrass. Telling the locals you are going to Dewrass will provoke gales of unstoppable laughter. Secondly, if you plan to walk the beach from Duhhras South to Duhhras North, prepare to swim the outflowing channel from Durras Lake. 

 

Point Upright rock platform

A couple of hours before low tide, Doug and I strolled north along Durras Beach confident that we would be on the rock platforms around Point Upright while the tide was still falling. After about 40 minutes, we got to the outflow of Durras Lake to find a deep swift moving channel running out to sea. I stripped to the waist and tried to cross the channel right where it meets the surf holding my pack over my head, but the water was too deep to cross without committing to a swim and we had no dry bag for our packs. A look at the map, confirmed what we both knew to be true, there is no bridge, so we scurried back down the beach and drove out to the highway and north to Durras North.

 

Grasshopper Island off Point Upright

We found somewhere to park that was not in the National Park (who carries $8 in 5 cent coins to insert into park ticket machines?) and took a track down to the beach on the north side of the channel. A quick walk north along the beach and we were on the rocks heading around Point Upright. The next two kilometres to Depot Beach is some of the best rock platform walking you'll find anywhere. A broad flat rock platform, accessible only at low tide, butts up against steep cliffs capped by sandstone roofs. There are deep sea caves and huge boulders. In some sections, the platform feels wide and spacious, in others, the waves are almost against the cliff walls and you have to hurry by between waves. 

 

Caves and cliffs

Depot Beach is a small bay of sand between rock platforms and continuing north you cross another broad rock platform and then walk along a pebbly beach to reach sandy Pebbly Beach. We had planned to turn back at Pebbly Beach but there were more rock platforms north of Pebbly Beach so we continued around the next headland north, across the head of a rocky bay, and then along more rock platform until we were almost at Clear Point. 

 

South along Point Upright

Heading back south, we followed the Durras Mountain track back to Pebbly Beach and then spent half an hour going up and down between between the streets of Depot Beach and various forest tracks until we found the track that heads back over Point Upright headland to Durras North. Hint, find the track at the top of Carr Street. A steady climb uphill through Spotted Gum forest leads over the Murramarang Range and then steeply down to Durras North.

Walking Mystery Bay to Narooma

One of the nicest short segments of coast to paddle south of Batemans Bay is from Narooma to Mystery Bay. There is only one section of long beach, the rest is rocky islets and coves, sea caves and tunnels, and tiny pocket beaches tucked between headlands. While I've paddled this stretch a few times, I've never walked it. Much of the coastline is in the Eurobodalla National Park, but some sections are private and some of the coast is inaccessible by foot even at low tide. I had found some information on-line that suggested that walking from Narooma Beach, just south of the golf course, to Mystery Bay was passable entirely along the coast. Turns out walking from Narooma Beach to Mystery Bay is not exactly that simple.

 

One of many sea caves near Mystery Bay

I dropped Doug at Narooma Beach and drove south to Mystery Bay. I had a large drybag to enable a wet crossing of the channel draining Corunna Lake and hoped to meet Doug half-way to pass off this necessary piece of gear. Starting from Mystery Bay, I wandered through the campground - much larger than it appears from a kayak. There is no single foot track through the campground, you have to walk along the various roads that give access to campsites. At a couple of places, side tracks lead out to the cliffs, the most prominent of these goes to "whale watchers point" where there is a life buoy and a grand view out to Montague Island as well as up and down the coast. If you walk north a short distance along rocks you can stand above the slot which cleaves off a tiny square island and look down into where we had paddled a few weeks before. 

 At high tide you can paddle right through this arch

At the north end of the campground, Eurobodalla National Park starts and a wide mowed track leads north to Corunna Point past another couple of lookouts. The channel from Corunna Lake was rapidly running in, but was only about hip deep so I did not need the dry bag to wade across. Between Loader and Fuller Beaches there is a small headland which is impassable at high tide. It was easy to bush-bash around through open forest and slither down a wombat track on the north side. 

 

Looking north from Bogota Head

I met up with Doug coming south of Bogota Head. His morning had been somewhat more convoluted than mine as he had been chased off the beach by aggressive dogs near Glasshouse Rocks and had been forced into a lengthy detour inland. The dogs came out of the "cottage" just above the beach which sold a year or two ago for almost $8 Million. Ideally council would negotiate some right of way here as this is the only section of coastline (once past the golf course) that is not publicly accessible. At low tide, you may be able to skirt around on the beach, but that also depends on whether or not the marauding dogs reappear and try to chew your leg off. 

 

Rocky cove at Barunga Point

After exchanging information with Doug, I continued north where there is public access on a rough track around Bogota Head as this sliver of coast is part of Eurobodalla N.P. I had lunch on a little beach tucked in between the rocks before continuing along the right of way to Barunga Point. The outflow from Nandudga Lake was dry when I passed (Doug had waded it a few hours before) and I strolled up Handkerchief Beach and then out to the highway to wait for Doug to pick me up.

Bouldering and Better Than Nothing

If you looked at my blog you would think all I had done for the last three weeks was scroll through Instagram selfies and watch bouldering videos. And, while I have watched some bouldering videos (I have kind of a girl crush on Alex Puccio), my loathing for social media has not changed all that much. Mostly, my blog has been dead because I've been out doing stuff and don't seem to have had a sufficiently long space of time to write anything up. 

 

Tidal river in the bush below my Mum's house

So, I looked back at our trip database - what, you don't have a trip database - get one immediately, if only for the "this day in history" nostalgia you can indulge in - and looked at all the things I had been doing. Most of them are short little mini-adventure trips that I'll group together in the next couple of blog posts. 

 

Doug on one of the Shire crags

Fairly recently, I spent about 10 days in Sydney rescuing my Mum from a wacky medical system where life-style illnesses are treated piecemeal with various medications and no actual life-style change. Yeah, roll that around in your head for a while. Science has worked out how to send people into space but our brightest doctors still prescribe one or more medications for each symptom of a single life-style induced condition instead of just changing the circumstances that produced the symptoms in the first place. Frankly, if you get out of the medical system in just slightly worse condition than you went in, you are doing extraordinarily well.

 

Jannali bouldering: Puccio would make short work of this

Anyway, while I was in Sydney, between wrangling with medical professionals, I went bouldering. My Mum lives in the Shire, not the one from the well known Tolkien series, but the Sutherland Shire and there is a lot of climbing and bouldering in the Shire. No big walls, just lots of little sandstone cliffs scattered all over the place, many within easy walking distance of where my Mum lives. Most days I would get out for an hour or so of bouldering which was terrific fun and probably where my girl crush on Puccio started. 

 

A problem real boulderers would not bother with

On a similar theme, I finished up work on what I call, Bogan Wall. It's a small granite area nearby named after the three or four wrecked cars at the base. It's not Puccio style, being slabby rather than powerful, but it is within walking distance and it is climbing, and I call that better than nothing.

Bingie and Back by Boat and Boot with Bouldering

Now that we've paddled the coast from Lake Conjola to Bermagui - apart from that pesky short section between Tuross Heads and Potato Point - doing something novel requires a different approach. I first got the idea of a circuit trip from Jason who paddled from Mallacoota to Wonboyne and then walked back along the same track we followed a few years ago. Our circuit trip would be considerably shorter: paddling from Shelly Beach at Moruya Heads down to Bingie Bingie Point, then walking back along the beach and the Bingie Dreaming Track. At the last minute, we threw in our rock shoes to do some bouldering on granite boulders along the way. 

 

Doug heads out from Shelly Beach

Paddling out from Shelly Beach was easy, easier than it had been the day before when we had come down surfing the kayaks and I had capsized and bailed while trying to avoid being driven into an onshore reef on a rambunctious wave. There are usually dolphins feeding at the river mouth but today only the usual seals were resting near the rocks below Toragy Point. The swell was running between 1.5 and 2.5 metres so the reef off Pedro Point was breaking but we found an open passage to paddle through. 

 

Doug buried in Shelly Beach surf

Congo Point was also breaking solidly and there are shallow shoals for a couple of kilometres past Congo Point that were also breaking. There were more seals at Mullimburra Point and good size breakers all the way down Meringo Beach but landing in the shelter of Bingie Bingie Point was simple. We lugged the boats up the beach and hid them in a copse of trees. In the spirit of having a full multi-sport day I had a swim, which was pretty brief as the water felt cold. Then we started walking. 

 

Mullimburra Point

Walking along a soft sand beach at high tide is quite a bit slower than paddling the same distance. About twice as slow probably. We climbed our usual boulder problems at Grey Rocks, and then walked up to Mullimburra Point and traversed a few short walls there. North of Meringo we got on the Bingie Dreaming Track which passes through a beautiful gum forest and returned to the beach south of Congo Point. Congo Creek is still open to the sea but the wade across is getting shallower. 

 

Heading north

Somewhere just south of Pedro Point I stepped on a bee and got stung, which would not be a big deal except I happen to be allergic to bees, wasps and hornets. I took a couple of anti-histamines right away and kept walking, but soon felt that ominous breathlessness coming on so I stopped and shot myself up with adrenaline. This always makes me jittery and a bit faint, so I got fairly slow for a while. 

 

Grey Rocks

At Pedro Point we got on the gravel road that runs behind the beach for a short distance as I felt pretty shaky, but it was not very pleasant walking, so after only a hundred metres or so we went back down onto the beach. We got back to Shelly Beach after 2.5 hours paddling and 4.5 hours walking and bouldering. It was a pretty good multi-sport day but I'm not sure I would make every kayak day a self-propelled circuit trip.

Hormesis In 44 Km: Dwyers Creek to Mossy Point

Twenty two kms by bicycle and 22 kms on foot has a nice round sort of resonance to it. Even better, at 44 km, the round trip journey would be entirely self-propelled and long enough to elicit a beneficial hormetic stress. Unfortunately, Doug had to stay at home working, enduring a much less healthy type of stress. 

 

Malabar Weir

I got away pretty early on a sunny warm day and cycled out along North Head Drive to the south end of Bengello Beach. Along the way, I stopped at a couple of places looking at the bouldering potential, but was soon out at Sandy Point. There is a track behind Bengello Beach but I had decided I would walk up the beach while I was fresh and use the track on the return when I thought I might feel tired. 

 

Bengello Beach

Apart from a couple of extremely yappy rat dogs, it was a quiet walk up the beach, around Broulee Head, Broulee Island, along Broulee Beach to Candlagan Creek. I did not want to use the bridge so I waded across somehow choosing the deepest section of flow and getting a good crotch dunk.

 

View to Mossy Point

I had considered scrambling around the rocks to Mossy Point and started out that way but travel proved quite slow and as I was now four hours in, I came back at the first deep gulch and took the easy way up a track onto the headland, around the grassy headland to the lookout and then down a steep track to sit by a rock pool for lunch. 

 

Perfect winter swimming hole

The return journey seemed quicker as the tide had gone out and the sand was firm. I did not bother with the track behind the beach and strolled down Bengello Beach instead, unaccosted by dogs as the morning dog walk hour was long over. Onto the bike at Sandy Point, along the river, across the bridge and home for a late lunch. Adding a 22 km kayak would nicely round out the day but then I would have to use an infernal combustion engine.

The Shopping Bus Tour: Conjola Park to Ulladulla by Sea Kayak

On Sunday, we had an uneventful paddle from Moruya Heads to Mosquito Bay getting the requisite 30 kilometres done just moments before the Mosquito Bay cafe closed. There were good waves at Moruya Heads and even an outgoing tide to facilitate paddling back out for the next wave, but both lads were shy of getting wet at the beginning of the day. I had a lone dolphin swim beside my boat through the channel and caught one good wave before we started paddling north. 

 

The beach and kayak shot with Burrewarra Point behind

Mark wanted to catch a few waves off Tomakin Beach, the site of previous kayak disasters. It's not that many months since I had a long swim into the beach after capsizing in a wave and wet exiting here. The Dart managed to ride a few waves in but with a heavy less manoeuvrable boat - the Tug, perhaps - I found the waves a bit small to get on. Doug was resolutely staying dry. 

 

Leaving lunch beach

Burrewarra Point was probably as calm as I have seen it, possibly because we managed to round it at slack tide. We had lunch, or oranges, on a small south facing beach with a squirrelly wave near Jimmies Island, and on my urging went in to check out the wave on Mackenzies Beach which always looks so perfect whenever I drive past. The swell was certainly big enough but did seem to be dumping onto a steep beach so we passed by. After that it was a straight line for Mosquito Bay and the putative delights of the Mosquito Bay cafe. 

 

Doug and Mark at Burrewarra Point

Monday with light northerly winds forecast we drove up to Conjola Park north of Ulladulla to paddle from Conjola Lake back to Ulladulla. A "shoppers bus" runs up the coast from Ulladulla to Nowra and it is only 1.5 kilometres to walk from the bus stop on the Princes Highway out to the boat ramp at Conjola Park. After unloading the boats at a small dirt ramp in Conjola Par, Doug took the car back to Ulladulla and joined a handful of grey haired ladies taking the bus north while I hung out at a small jetty at the west end of the lake. 

 

East end of Conjola Lake

It's a straight forward paddle east along the lake which is pleasant enough in winter but must be horrific in summer as I doubt anyone sticks to the 4 knot speed limit. As you approach Conjola Beach you start to hear the roar of the surf on the beach and, of course, begin to hope the surf exit will be easy and dry. Conjola Bar is currently open but only to kayaks as the water is not near deep enough for a power boat. The channel snakes around in an oxbow before draining out through some rocks. 

 

Heading south down Conjola Beach 

We got out of the boats to take a look at the surf break-out and it looked easy enough to paddle north through the swash zone and ride a prominent rip out through the swells near Green Island. There was, however, quite a few white-caps and a 10 knot southeasterly blowing. I made it easily but Doug got bottomed out on some rocks in the channel and had to get out of the boat again. Paddling south down Conjola Beach felt like a bit of a slog into the wind as I was feeling sore from the day before. Long beaches are like long glacier approaches, the end seems to approach quite slowly. 

 Ulladulla Head

 

We pulled in at Narrawallee Inlet where the bar is also open for small craft to unravel our legs. South of this small nature reserve, the developed all the way to Ulladulla. Soon after we started paddling again Doug saw a green turtle which seems very far south from their normal range. Heading east along Bannister Point we got some shelter from the wind and there are big sandstone cliffs as you round Bannister Point, where we had a bit of bumpy water but the wind had slackened. 

 Herons in Ulladulla Harbour

A few pods of dolphins swam with us as we paddled south to Collers Beach where a group of surfers were riding a small break. Next is Ulladulla Head which has a big sandstone spit sticking into the ocean, and then, happily for me, round the headland and into Ulladulla Harbour. My shoulders, back and butt were tired and 22 km was far enough.