Beaches Part III

Introduction

Welcome to our English blog! My friends and I made a journey along the 50.000 km long coast of Australia. We can`t visit every of the 11,011 beaches and so we have to try to only go to the seven famous and favoured beaches. We have chosen as possible beaches all over Australia, what wasn`t difficult, because 12 million of the Australian inhabitants (85%) live only one hour by car away from the coast. I hope it will be interesting!!!!!

Byron Bay

Today we arrived at Byron Bay at the north coast of Australia, in New South Wales. It`s great weather here and you can see a lot of wonderful, unspoiled nature. We didn`t know it before, but here we are at Australia`s most eastern point.

The symbol of Byron Bay is a lighthouse in the east of the bay, the Cape Byron Light. In the evening we`ve planned a trip to that place, because I have heard that the sunset there should be awesome to see. Also, you can see how the lighthouse keepers have lived in their houses and worked in the past. Every year there are about 2 million viewers and more than 200,000 are from other countries. But famous is Byron Bay mostly because of its hundreds of kilometers of beach. Especially surfers like this big, long drawn-out bay, because you find optimal conditions for surfing. Almost all the taxis have some roof beams on it to transport the surfing boards. This morning we went swimming in the sea. You can swim here throughout the whole year because the water temperature is always about 18°-25°C. We`ve seen some humpback whales and that`s another big reason why the tourists are coming here: whale watching. They are here in the sea till June, July and from November to October. Sometimes you can also see dolphins here, but you can better view them if you go to the beach in the morning, when it is just quiet. The name the bay had from a John Byron.

Cottesloe

In the last days we made a long journey to Perth. That is a pretty green city with a bit more than 1.740.000 citizens in the west of Australia. It has a lot of terraced lawns, where you can have a picnic for example. In the west from Perth´s city centre there`s Cottesloe, which is famous for its beautiful beach. Very impressive are the high Norfolk Pines, from which some trees are older than 70 years. At the beach there are only a few reefs and nearly no sea grass, but therefore kilometres of grit sand and a clean, clear coastline, where it is very favoured to walk into the ocean, go fishing in the deep-sea or snorkel. Because of the bad wave breaking we haven´t seen any wave surfers yet but there are two or three kiters, that we`ve seen at the horizon. But I think for swimming and relaxing this beach is perfect. Sir Frederick Napier Broome (1883-1890 governor of West Australia) named this district on the 21. September 1886 in honour of his brother, who became the baron of Cottesloe in 1874 .

Rottnest Island

Yesterday we were at Rottnest Island. That`s a beautiful island near Perth. Some Natives in the city tells us that it should be a beautiful, untouched place. Yesterday I didn´t write anymore because I was so tired. Cars aren`t allowed there and so we had to walk and had seen one Quokka, from which the island has got its name.

The native was right. It was fantastic! Rottnest Island has got 63 sheltered beaches with very clear, turquoise water. It`s an exciting adventure to snorkel around the many coral reefs or dive to the 13 historic wrecks. Also there should be good fishing places, where we were not, because we are all not doing that. After we were so tired that we couldn`t walk any step further we made a pleasure flight with a helicopter to see the island from the high-angle shot. There we`ve learned that in the past the island was used as a prison for Aborigines. Bye!