Wednesday, November 28 - Exploring Kiama

It was foggy and drizzling when we got up. After a full (we did skip the sausage) delicious Australian breakfast of eggs, bacon, mushroom, tomatoes, & beans (after yogurt and homemade stewed rhubarb and warm croissants with marmalade) we said good bye to Sonya and Terry and left for the day to discover the Kiama area.

Little Blowhole




 

We had looked at the famous Blowhole yesterday which wasn’t doing anything, so we drove to the Little Blowhole which performed much better, jetting streams of seawater into the air about 20’ high. There is a 22 km shoreline walking trail so we started from there, but found the walk, at that location, went along town streets, so we drove north to the beginning point at the village of Minnamurra which sits at the mouth of a river of the same name.



The river winds past a huge sand spit and by a large volcanic plug island. We hiked up a high bluff overlooking the river mouth in very light rain to the next bay, Jones Beach.

Mouth of the Minnamurra River

 

 

The coastline here consists of a series of beautiful beaches separated by rocky lava outcroppings and very hilly small villages. This area is a very popular retirement community & a summer beach destination for Canberra and Sydney. There is also a small double-decker train that runs up the coast to Sydney all through the day so one can actually commute to the city from here.

We drove into Kiama for a lunch at the Ice Creamery Kiama and had ginger, macadamia, honeycomb, java cake, and passion fruit ice creams - great!















Hilary then drove us up through the town of Jamberoo, up a very steep road through increasingly foggy and misty weather to 2000’ to the Barren Grounds Nature Preserve, an area of heath scrub land where the Ground Parrot and Eastern Bristlebird live. By then we had driven into dense fog and rain. The birds that live there don’t like that weather (one might ask why they live there) so there was no point in wetly walking around when we couldn‘t see much, so we returned to the coast.

We found the Spring Creek Bird Hide and Wetlands, a marvelous little park surrounding a marsh land between a housing development and the highway that was purchased, recovered and developed by the city council at the urging of local environmentalists with walking paths, bridges and a very nice bird hide. We sat there and watched pelicans, cormorants and Hard Head Ducks swimming and feeding and what we thought might be a group of five Southern Water Skinks basking on a log.

Southern Water Skinks, or a closely related species

That evening we drove into Kiama to the Seabreeze Restaurant set on the picturesque Kiama Harbor lined with Canary Island Palms. The restaurant’s front glass wall folds back so we were sitting almost on the sidewalk with a wonderful view of the water. Hilary and I had the fish of the day, Black Fish, which is very similar in texture and flavor to the Blue Fish of our youth and we both ate every scrap. Bob had chicken breast stuffed with almonds and figs. For dessert we split a deep-fried ball of vanilla ice cream stuffed with chocolate candy, rolled in hazel nuts with white and dark chocolate sauce! Wheeeew! Really good!