When my sister was out visiting from Japan recently, she and I went on a good little Sydney day-trip to Bundeena and Jibbon Beach, on the Cronulla Coast, inside the Royal National Park.
We got there by driving half-way to Wollongong and then cutting up through the National Park. It was such a nice drive – I can’t believe the shooters party actually wanted to let people hunt in there. Idiots.
When we got there we parked near the public toilets, as you do, and then walked down onto Gunyah Beach, which looks out over Bundeena Bay towards Cronulla.
We then walked around the rocks to Jibbon Beach, a long expanse of sand shaped like a scimitar, and continued up around the headland of Jibbon Point, which is also known as Port Hacking Point. We sat on the rocks for a while looking out across the ocean towards New Zealand.
We then continued along the track, following the coastline, until the track disappeared. I don’t think a lot of people walk it. Unfortunate, because it’s an amazing place to visit. As it was, the track was rough going at times, I ended up with lots of small scratches and some dusty knees from the crawling through scrub we had to do.
So we had to head back the way we came. It was good though, because we discovered the Aboriginal rock carvings that we’d missed on the way in. There is a lot of Aboriginal heritage in the area, but this is the only accessible one.
The name Bundeena is aboriginal for “a noise like thunder”, and this word is said to come from the noise the waves make at the beach. I don’t really see the onomatopoeia of it, but then again ‘bark’ doesn’t really sound like what a dog does either.
When we got back to Bundeena, we found the local cafe and ordered a couple of vegetarian platters as a well-earned lunch. The menu said that the platter came with ‘chickpea patties’, which I was very excited about, but it turned out they were just falafel.
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