24.12.2019
I felt like I could stay in bed all day, but got up around 8, when Matt went out to snarffle takeaway coffees for us – what a treat! We were kind of torn with what to do today – we had a big one yesterday, do we stay local and potter, or go hard on such a nice day? It turned out to be the latter in as far as you can go hard on a small island. We set off for the calcified forest, taking the turn out to Seal Rock lookout before we did so. This was a place I visited within my first few days on the island, when with sideways rain and gumboot blisters, I ran out a few metres in my socks, saw sea, and went back to the car. What a difference today – great weather, Matt by my side, and met the park ranger.
The new lookout is amazing and the view very dramatic. I desperately wanted to get down to the shore, as I could see kelp beds, and may well have done so if Matt weren’t there to reiterate how steep the slope was. We headed back to the calcified forest – a wee trudge to not much of a scenic view, but it was a nice walk and we saw a pretty chilled wallaby.
As we were so close to Stokes Point and I had my sidekick with me, we decided to go for it. Thanks to his navigational skills we found the (unmarked) road, which wasn’t as hairy as I had been led to believe. And here, I found kelp nirvana – kelp beds I could get down close to in order to photograph. Happy, happy Svenja scrambled, climbed, and crawled all over the place. I was exhausted by the time Matt waved at me to come in!
We drove to the site of the Cataraqui wreck, with the memorials and the amazing rock formations. By now close to a hangry, we drove back to town, looking for lunch at the Golf Club, but no luck. So it was a turkey burger (we had ‘gobbled’ at some of the wild ones on our way out!) at the pub, meeting up with a few others, then home for a nap before walking back in to town to see Santa’s arrival on a firetruck! I’m sure it was most of the island’s population there, and we caught up with just about everyone! So it’s Kelpy Kelpmas from me!!
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