Christmas in Australia is certainly different – it feels more like being on a summer holiday! Today we went to Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay. It claims to have the whitest sand of any beach in the world, but I expect that many places make the same claim. It is a wide, sheltered bay with jade-green water, fringed by the bush (and of course the white sand). In November, when the humpback whales are migrating back to the Antarctic, the mother whales often bring their calves into Jervis Bay for a rest because the water is calmer, and the mother whales teach them how to be whales. Sadly, we have not seen any whales all the time we have been here, even though we have been by the sea so often.
But we had a great time at Hyams Beach, especially jumping the waves, which are surprisingly powerful. Twice they completely knocked me over! The wind was extremely strong, which kept us cool, and fortunately our sun shelter stayed upright. Daniel was more cautious about the waves, but collected seed heads from the trees over the beach and played with them in the sand.
Jervis Bay is close to one of the huge out-of-control bushfires, and on the way back, we could clearly see the fire front, with a curtain of smoke stretching right across the landscape, broken only by taller plumes of smoke. We had a rather closer encounter than we anticipated, however, as a few miles further on, another bushfire had recently developed (while we were on the beach, as it wasn’t there before) and it was blowing thick smoke right across the motorway. We could smell it strongly in the car and it made our eyes sting. To James’ delight (and mine too!), a fire helicopter flew over with a huge water bucket hanging below it, and dumped it on the fire. By the time we had returned to Wollongong, Grandad’s ‘Fires near Me’ app told us that it was out. A real bushfire experience!
Nana Down Under 