Jervis Bay

Jervis Bay (which is about 3 hours by car from Canberra on the east coast of Australia) is a well sheltered bay with a number of small villages and extremely white beaches all along the bay. In fact, Haym’s Beach is renowned as the whitest beach in the world. Since I haven’t seen every beach in the world (yet!), I can’t say for sure but it sure was white!

We got up VERY early on Saturday so Jim could deal with office emails before getting on the road and then we were off trying to navigate out of Canberra. More roundabouts and roads that resemble the “begats” of the Bible: Canberra Avenue begat Morton Ave that begat Farmer Ave that begat Hume Ave. You get the picture… We were delighted to find Princes Highway with just two “do over’s” in our route.

We got to Huskisson (one of the villages on Jervis Bay) and checked in with Whale Watch. Their chalk board boasted three Whales sightings on Wednesday and two on Thursday. The wind was blowing and it was a pretty wild ride with lots of watching and no whales. We carefully avoided the bottom decks as we watched a fair number of passengers staggering downstairs to “chum the waters” over the back rail carrying cool little barf bags with the Whale Watcher’s logo. What a souvenir!

We did get to see some dolphins and the captain kept up a great commentary of the history of the area and lots of other area trivia. We had a great conversation and shared tea (curiously - served on china) with a nice couple from Canberra. He is a software engineer (still working in Fortran for the computer geeks!) and she is a physician’s assistant.

After the slightly disappointing boat ride, we went to the Booderee National Park (not to be confused with the Budderoo National Park, just up the street) and visited their large and mostly deserted botanical garden. After a one hour bushwacking hike around the “Billabong” (aka Pond) and seeing NOTHING, we stopped to rest in a clearing where Lara wanted to “wait and see if anything interesting shows up. No talking!” After about 10 minutes of this thrilling activity, where a magpie accosted Lara (see picture), Jim was making gestures that implied a desire to move along. At that exact instant, we both heard rustling in the brush and 3 kangaroos hopped along in the brush directly behind Jim and out of camera range. Jim immediately jumped up and started tracking them back down to the billabong. After about 5 minutes, he got in range and started snapping photos. When they finally ran off, he triumphantly trooped back to the clearing to find Lara taking photos of another pair of kangaroos that had hopped up (mother and joey) into the open.

Jim sized up the situation and used hunter’s sign language to instruct Lara to “sneak around behind them” and flush (the usual role for Jim’s hunting dog Belle – erg) them through the clearing for some great action shots (does anyone else hear the eerie movie music?). Lara crept around the brush to the road that would take her to the other side of the Kangaroo and its baby. As she stepped out she came face to face (well it was still about 30’ but with nothing between her and the animal) with the kangaroo. Just the two of them looking at each other. The Kangaroo’s lip began to curl up and her large left foot began to twitch as if to say, “Listen Sheila, you get near my baby and I am going to have to go wild POSSUM on you.” Lara thought about it. Then she looked at the claws. Then she noticed the fiendish look in the creature’s eyes. Then she remembered scenes from “Animals Gone Wild.” Then she backed away carefully keeping her eye on the beast and suggested that Jim should do any flushing if he felt that brave! We escaped to the safety of our car where we congratulated ourselves on our excellent photos.

That night we stayed in a Bed and Breakfast (Nelson’s Beach Lodge) which is actually just a private home with a wonderful lady (Robyn) who “lets” (rents) out rooms in her house. Robyn had a great recommendation for dinner at a local restaurant hidden in a Motel complete with an after dark, flashing blue Neon Sign advertising “Motel Vacancy”. Every seat was taken in this small restaurant and we had a leisurely and delicious seafood dinner.

We got up at 0530 (assisted by a very loud Kookaburra bird outside the window) in order to be at the boat dock by 6am to meet “Simo” of Simo’s Afloat Fishing Charters. In spite of the early hour, Robyn had set out a charming Australian breakfast complete with a coffee press and toast with jam.

Simo was helping the other couple aboard as we arrived. Simo has a 20’ aluminum power catamaran which is a fairly typical Australian fishing boat. We were introduced to Andy from Sydney and Julie from Jervis Bay. Julie, who had never been fishing before was wearing a skirt!

Once positioned on the reef, we immediately caught a bunch of various fish. It was exhausting reeling up the heavy weights from 300’ down! Simo dashed from guest to guest baiting the hooks and removing the latest catch. He warned us of the “leatherback” that make a “Piranha look like a goldfish”. See picture of the teeth.

Meanwhile, at one point Simo was busy with Lara’s hook when Jim hauled in a brilliant orange fish and grabbed it by the lip to remove the hook. As he did that, Simo saw what he was doing and gasped. Lara looked up and commented “Jim, what are you doing? Please don’t stick your fingers in the mouth of ANYTHING in Australia!” Jim froze holding the fish as Simo annunced that the fish was a Rock Cod - a relative of the lion fish/scorpion fish with venomous spines. (Jim note – Since I wasn’t actually being stung at the time, I asked Simo how to continue that happy state of affairs. We managed to get the fish into its special basket in the holding tank without injury!)

After fishing the reefs for hours dashing from spot to spot, we came back inside the bay when it started getting rough and we fished for squid. We only caught 2 but it’s enough for a calamari meal! These were interesting to catch as they tried to “ink” us. If it were not for the skill of the Captain we would be sporting new black stained clothes.

We finished up back at the dock in the late afternoon and watched the captain feed the fish scraps to the “pet” stingrays at the dock. These rays were HUGE (approximately 4’ across the “wings”) and there were four or five of them circling the dock. Every now and then their large barbs came up out of the water. See pictures…

One Monday, we took a stroll along the beach, sat on the rocks and talked about how nice it would be to live in Jervis Bay!

A note on Robyn, our hostess: she semi-retired after she sold her “Cattle Ranch/farm and restaurant and moved to Jervis Bay 7 years ago. She is a member of the local sailing club and has fascinating stories of having traveled around the world as a nurse and as crew on various sailing boats in various parts of the world.

We reviewed our options and we decided to take a dirt road on the return since we’d been told that it was a glorious drive. Along the way, we stopped to see the waterfall at the Tianjara Creek. It’s barely marked. You come to a dirt parking area and then follow a dirt trail to the edge of the ravine. There is a sort of fence and an overlook at the edge of the several hundred foot sheer drop. Once again, true to Australian form: a new and different opportunity to kill ourselves. Jim clambered around a bit to get a good vantage for photos with Lara gasping and shrieking, sure that no one would believe that she did not push Jim off the edge (even though the four life insurance polices were just updated before we left the USA).

The dirt road was full of interesting photo opportunities. My favorite is the sign for the slippery road. Look carefully for the hand drawn person on the sign…

Knowing that we have such little time, we threw our bags in the apartment and headed by foot to “Floriade” (a tulip and flower fair near the University). More fun with the camera.

Pictures included in this post are dolphins and scenery from our “whale watching” trip and kangaroos and birds from Boudaree National Park. We also included photos from our fishing trip, the dirt road drive home and Floriade.

Head scratcher of the Day: On the drive to Jervis Bay, we stopped at a convenience store for coffee and some directions. The owner talked us out of buying a map since the drive is an easy one. He told us “Just keep on this road for about 100 kilometers until you come to the roundabout in Bateman’s Bay. Then you take the road to Ulladulla and Bob’s your uncle.” After thinking about it (and remembering that neither Lara nor I have an uncle named Bob) we decided that this meant something similar to “you’re home free.”

Seen on TV earlier in the week: “Warning to Torres Strait Islanders and aboriginal people, the following program has images and voices of deceased persons.” This warning was at the beginning of a “National Geographic” kind of show about the Torres Strait Islands and the northern Australian aboriginal people. Since some of the people in the documentary are no longer living, the producers had to include that warning since it would be extremely upsetting to the viewers from that culture because it would interfere with their dream life. (At least that’s what we were told.)