About 50kms south of Sydney is a massive park called the Royal National Park.

It was established in 1879 and is the worlds second oldest national park after Yellowstone. The park is 15000 hectares and includes a long ragged coastline, loads of beaches, and rolling hills, gullys and rocky outcrops covered in bush.

It is the furthest we have been from Sydney so far and made me even more keen to see other parts of this huge country.

Flo and I finally had the same day off and a means of transport with 2 seats, so we went for our first ever proper trip out of Sydney, only as far as West Head, but its a start…hopefully many more missions to come!

This guy has some great images…

More of his images here.

Some other great images from the JPG Oceanography Theme Challenge here.

Aint so bad…

We have got in to a good habit, usually at the end of the day, of walking round the bay from Manly to Shelley beach and snorkling back again. Every time is different – sometimes the u/w visibility is great, other times the swell is pounding through, sometimes the walking route is packed with people, other times it is just us…but its always a really good experience, helps me relax and makes me feel more connected to nature and where we live…

The first big winter storm swells have been rolling through…

I went out to the Bower on the point as the swell had a lot of south in it and that’s the least southerly protected part of Manly bay. However it is a pretty sketchy right hand break coming around the point – you definitely dont want to go left – and all the waves end in a rocky boulder boneyard…

There were about 10-15 surfers and a bunch of body boarders in the 6-8ft line up…I saw plenty of great rides, a couple of guys getting barreled, some monster slams, and one body boarder lose his board and have it smashed on the rocks…