Jervis Bay (Booderee National Park)

Jervis Bay

 Summercloud Bay. "Aussie Pipeline" looking more like...mush.

In search of waves, Charlotte and I stumbled across a place called Jervis Bay which is supposedly home to a legendary wave called 'Aussie Pipeline'. This took us through one of the only Aboriginal owned National Parks in Australia, Booderee National Park, at the southern end of Jervis Bay. This was a rainforest-filled, unspoilt and undeveloped area with next to no inhabitants, so everything was pristine. When we arrived at Summercloud Bay to find surf, the onshore wind had flattened down the swell and made the entire area choppy (as in the photos above). So we decided to explore the north end of the National Park, within the bay area as this would be offshore in these conditions, and came across this:

Yup. This spot itself was called Green Patch, and Jervis Bay claims to have the whitest sand in the world, and there was no doubt it was very, very fine and powdery and kind of hard to look at in the sun as it was a bit dazzling. It was also empty, no-one else around, no signs of buildings or development. It was unspoiled and natural as Australia gets. Even the kangaroo's weren't remotely fazed by us being there:

This was the middle of winter, but the middle of winter here isn't quite like the middle of winter at home. So I went for a swim. The sea was teeming with life:

 Spot the stingray!

Squint and you can see the shoals of fish!

We ventured further around the National Park to other beaches, and explored the Botanic Gardens.

30 seconds before the below photo was taken, I was looking at the lake and walking along a path when Charlotte shrieked, flapped and ran away. I span round to see a red-bellied black snake slithering quickly along the path. I waited for it to move into the undergrowth before photographing the lake.