November 2011
Sixteen people and one little dog (Elsie) started early for our walk around the Bendalong coastline – we were anxious not to miss the start of the Bridge Party later in the day.
The day started out as glorious, with the sun shining and a gentle breeze.
The walk is an easy one and not too long, being only about 4.5 kms; dogs are allowed on a leash (and running free on Washerwoman’s Beach before 8am and after 4pm).
There are plenty of toilets at each beach and even a play area for children at Boat Harbour. Bendalong village was established by Europeans in about 1880 as a timber mill and there are the remains of the tramway used to carry the timber to the jetty for transport on the ocean going vessels.
Today there are ‘friendly’ stingrays in the shallows, which come for a feed of fish tossed out by the fishermen cleaning their catches on the shore. As well we saw a pod of dolphins not far from the beach and the ubiquitous pelicans also waiting patiently, stirred to flight only when we came too close.
From Boat Harbour there is a short uphill walk to the top of Red Head and a walk through bushland to a number of lookouts, from where we were lucky enough to see whales spouting, again not far from shore.
There are a number of tracks: the first leads to the ironically named One Tree Beach, a quiet, protected and isolated sandy cove, the perfect place for a family picnic; the next three lead to Inyadda Beach which is much longer and more exposed, with a cave at the northern end that is fun to explore at low tide.
From this beach take one of the paths about a quarter of the way along the sand and eventually it will lead you through pretty bush back to the village of Bendalong.
We still had plenty of time so we all drove for about five minutes through Manyana to Cunjurong Point for another walk along the coast. The tides were against us so we were unable to include a walk around Green Island (this can be accomplished easily only at very low tide and even then you really need to wear shoes with which you can walk around the black basalt rocks from a volcano that erupted about 30 million years ago), however it is another easy walk and very picturesque.
We started from the picnic area at the end of the dirt track leading from York Road and followed the rocky coastline of Lake Conjola to the bar and then turned north along the sand of Cunjurong Beach.
A huge sea eagle seemed to be following us, maybe eyeing Elsie as a tasty meal, but she escaped and we headed into the protective covering of the bush on the headland to make it a circular walk of about four kilometres.
Lunch was at the picnic tables back near the cars, where we had a view over Lake Conjola to Pigeon House Mountain, by this time of the afternoon shrouded in rain clouds.
Luckily, when we all made it back to the Valley for the party there was once again brilliant sunshine. Lee Sharam