I haven’t written in a couple of days because we have been busy having adventures. Today (Wednesday the 15th) is beautiful, so I have set up shop down on the beach in front of the house to write, it is to nice to sit on the couch and be inside. The seagulls are all busy in a “pond” just off to my left taking a bath. There are probably 15 of them in the pond that is formed in the big flat rocks as the tide went out. As is usual on beaches around here there is no one in sight. Off to my right the carpenter crabs are busy excavating their holes and if you look carefully you can see them only as movement, they blend in perfectly with the color of the sand. I have included a picture here of their work, I find it very fascinating, and wish I could set up a time elapse camera to watch them work. I am sitting 20’ from the center of the area they are working in (an area at least as big as our deck and all it takes is me moving my legs to make them scurry for their hole. Wow I am glad I am not a crab and have to live such a paranoid life.
What I really want to tell you about is the walk we went on yesterday. After a great surf in the morning, first at Angourie Point where there were some good sized (head high) fun waves coming in, which we both ripped on, when it got crowded we went over to Back Beach, where it was clean and head high. There is a pretty competitive crowd at Angourie that doesn’t make surfing fun for me, that is why we retired to back beach, it was nice to surf Angourie though while it lasted, it is a really fun wave. Angourie is a point break, not as good as Rincon, there is a lot of back wash that comes off the sloping rocks that form the head land so it can be bumpy. I don’t think we have seen it at it’s best either. Back Beach is a big beach break that can get some nice peaks to it; it is a lot like Old Man’s in Santa Barbara. I know I have said it before but the water over here is a delight. Boy it is going to be hard to come back to Santa Barbara crud and cold. We have worn a short john and been perfect in that.
So back to the walk. After eating some lunch, we drove back out to Angourie point and started down the beach with Shelly’s Beach as our destination (see pic of greg walking down toward Shelly's). I had spoken with a woman earlier who had told me you could walk down the beach and would see some stairs that would take you to the path. Well when we got to the stairs we decided we would try to walk around the headland, since I don’t think we have seen one yet that you couldn’t make it around, and the tide was very low as well. After 45 minutes of clambering over huge rocks and having the ocean right there on our left splashing big waves at us, we got to a spot where the high, steep cliffs fell right into the ocean. We were within a couple hundred yards of the beach,(see pic) but could not go down and could not bushwack our way across the bush-covered slope above the cliff. We had to admit defeat, as we didn’t think it was worth risking life and limb to get to Shelly’s beach. We were pretty disappointed.
So today we went on another surf safari to Brooms Head, which is south of here. Two blokes we had met had told us about it saying it was a good spot so we decided to check it out. It is probably a 45 min drive from here through some very beautiful country. Not as much sugar cane, more cattle then around Yamba. Our beach destination is part of the same park that Angourie Surf Reserve is a part of. It is admirable that the Australians have had the foresight to put aside this 60 km stretch of prime coastline for all of their citizens to enjoy in the form of a National Park. In the northern rivers district we are in, an area roughly the size of Southern California, there are 24 national parks and this does not include many nature reserves, and wilderness areas. You can camp at most of them for a couple of bucks a night, and they are so spacious and uncrowded it is amazing. You should see some of the getups the aussie have for their “campsites”. Tents, campers, tarps, you name it they have got the deluxe set up. The park even supplies you with firewood if you want to take it, and it is all hard wood left over ends from making 2x4’s ect.
I don’t know what the name of the place we went to was but it was a beach break and it was about head high, some fun little waves with good shape for a beach break. We surfed 2-3 hours until the tide went out to far.
I feel like I am in the best shape I have been in for years. It is nice to feel so strong in the water. My shoulder has been doing really well and not bothering me at all. When we were in Fiji and surfing 4 hours every day it started to get tired at the end, but not sore. Actually come to think of it my whole body was sore after surfing that much in Fiji. Life is tough.
One day I have not told you about yet is the first day it was really big at Angourie. It was a week ago tomorrow I think. Freddie and Colby (Fred’s 18 year old son) met us out there that morning, and it was big (well overhead!!). To get out to the lineup you walked way out to the point and jumped off some rocks then paddled like heck before a set comes….with any luck you were out without to much trouble or paddling. This was surf that was definitely pushing my limits, not just the size, but the competitive crowd that was in the water as well. I was really proud of how well I did; I caught some good waves and surfed them well. Freddie, who is a local, ran a little interference for me on one wave that helped (I dropped in on him, but he didn’t mind). It is an adrenaline rush for me to surf waves like that, but it takes a lot of courage and I am glad I don’t have to do it to often. It takes a lot of guts. I always tell Greg how nervous I am, and he says then he knows I will do well when I act like that. Greg really helps me, like getting out at Angourie when it was big, and not leaving me stranded. I couldn’t do it without him.
Now some crows are using the birdbath. It is time for me to close for now. It gets dark early down here; this is “winter” and nearly their shortest day. Hard to really realize that when it is so nice and warm.
Cherrio mate….
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