Surfing at Yamba

To surf or not to surf... That was the question this morning. Sitting up in the headland looking down at the waves of Yamba main beach, it was overcast, windy, our wetsuits were soaking wet and the waves looked small. Ooooo... The indecision!...

Then a surfer got in and suddenly, with a new sense of scale, the waves were revealed to be much bigger than they appeared. We drove down the the beach front to get a better point of view. Here there was shelter from the wind and suddenly a patch of blue sky appeared. Now was our moment!

Not only did we get some great waves, I also had a few memorable wildlife 'encounters'! There I was, out back, waiting for a wave, when suddenly a couple of the big gannets who had been circling the coast, dropped out of the sky and plummeted into the sea next to me looking for fish! Amazing close up - real precision dive bomb!

Later I saw the ominous sight of a fin appear out beyond the waves. The local life guard happened to be in the water, surfing next to me (we were the only beach users, so what else would you do if you were on duty!) and put me at ease, confirming that it was a dolphin! About five minutes later just as a big set of waves came in, it jumped clean out of the water, right in front of us! It was a whopper - considerably bigger than me at any rate. I took the next wave in to give it some space!!

Back on shore, we had the whole beach to ourselves and even a bit of sunshine. We dropped out boards at the van and walked over to natural sea water swimming pool at the edge of the beach for a couple of lengths. A quick shower later to rinse off and then we kicked back to enjoy the view with some lunch, both agreeing that 'it's always worth getting in'.

With the weather remaining as 'one of the coldest and wettest winters on record' and with the prospect of more rain to come, we abandoned plans to stay put for a few days and decided to carry on northward to see some new sights. 

There is a bit of a 'thing' around Australia for building big 'things' - partly to celebrate the local industry and presumably (more likely) for attracting tourists. Having already marvelled at the big koala and big banana over the course of our travels, imagine out delight on comming across a 9m high shrimp near the town of Ballina.

At Lennox Head, we hiked upto the headland and watched some hardy surfers catching the long right handers off the point. 

The view was great, but 'weather' was approaching fast! We had to retreat back to the van at speed, where we watched a big pod of dolphins pass by below us...