October 1st, 2005 – Palm Beach NSW

Saturday, Laure and I took a day trip to Palm beach up the northern coast from Sydney. We stepped on the bus and realized that neither of us had thought to bring the sunscreen! We jumped out of the bus at Avalon a small coastal town near the end of the peninsula on which Palm beach is located. After a brief morning relaxation on the beach we headed for Palm Beach. Unfortunately, neither of us realized that it was essentially a single lane highway the rest of the way to Palm. Needless to say, I didn’t hear the end of it for some time after we arrived. Although I’m the first to admit the blunder, in retrospect we got a much better appreciation for the scenery and landscape along our highway trek. At the end of the point there was a lighthouse on a rocky escarpment off the ocean called the head. Surrounding the head was the Beaunjoey aquatic reserve. Laure decided to sit out this little adventure and I went solo up to the lighthouse on the cliff and did a little bushwaking – all the while thinking of what type of snake or spider may be lurking under the following rock or bush as I pushed along. After an hour or so of baking ourselves apart, we headed to the bottom of the cliff where I bouldered around to the point on a flat rock ledge where the waves were crashing violently off the tip of the head. Both drained by the sun we caught a bus home and were out before 9:00pm.