I should rent myself out as a rain-maker

We were pleasantly surprised to find a well defined track out to the coastline from the “City Rock car park”. Looks like the track has been recently updated by NPWS. In areas it went through this lovely old tea-tree forest, really nice walking.

At the end of the track just before descending onto the rocks, we walked over an old Aboriginal midden – a spot where the traditional owners would have gathered and eaten the shellfish that they’d collected off the rocks.

Our first impression of the rocks – stunning! lots to explore.

And amazing colours – my guess is that this is a volcanic area.

Beautiful yellow lichen on a lot of the rocks.

Looking south – no way were we going to get down there, we didn’t think the cave would be to the south.

Rod checking just in case. Definitely a “no go”.

So, we headed across the rocks to the north of the rock-shelf.

And John was the first one to get over to where the cave is (behind him but he’s checking out to see if there are more).

The cave, taken from the northern side of the rock shelf, you can just see Marcia looking at the cave, and (probably) Rod, at the entrance (photo: John G)

Getting to the cave was a bit challenging, the rock was quite slippery and neither Rod nor I had the right shoes on (a challenge for us for the rest of the week).

This gives you a bit of an idea of what we had to cross to get to the cave. I took this shot once I was across, going back was much easier!

Marcia’s a bit unsure about crossing, but once I was over, she had a major case of FOMO, so decided to risk the slippery rocks.

Very happy now she’s across!

Me coming from the back of the cave. Rod & I did a quick survey (not much cave, but it did go back quite a distance), I’m standing on a chock-stone and the waves are crashing into the cave beneath me going back in another 5m. It was pretty impressive, I took my slippery shoes off to get to the cave and walked in bare foot (much more friction in bare feet).

Marcia on the rock shelf, returning back to the access track we’d taken.  Love this coastline! and the colour of the rocks!

The lighthouse keeper’s house on the top lh corner, and the beautiful rocky headland (which would have been devastating for shipping).

The now defunct lighthouse – replaced by modern technology, but a beautiful example of early Australian lighthouses.

We scouted around for about an hour, being unable to find a way down to this small cove. Eventually, John went off by himself, after waiting for half an hour, Rod and I decided that this hadn’t been a good idea, and then, just when we were starting to worry, John said he’d found a way down, “a bit of a scramble, we’ll need a rope!”

This wasn’t looking good, the way down looked to be vertical! Then FOMO set in and I followed down the route that John took, it would be definitely easier coming back up!

John telling Marcia about the most efficient route down, and yes, it looks scary and it was! But going up was a piece of cake.

A little bit further down and it’s still almost vertical, with lots of loose scrub.

I can’t tell you how happy I was to get down to almost level land.

And, at the bottom of where we came down there was evidence of another Aboriginal midden, I’d like to know how they got down!

We set off around the base of the clifff looking for the cave, and just ahead of us was looking promising.

And even more promising from this angle (Photo: John G)

John’s photo from inside the cave.

And there we are we’d found YU91! there’s definitely a dark zone so it’s the cave we were looking for.

Marcia and Rod surveyed the cave and John took an accurate GPS reading.

It was pretty much low tide when we arrived, and we found these interesting sea creatures on the rocks (about the size of a $1 coin, and sort of like sea anemones when they withdraw into themselves, most unusual and I haven’t seen them before.

And then I had a go at underwater photography, with an unusually coloured sea urchin.

Interestingly at this cave we found a lot of flow stone, coloured red (iron in the rock?)

This was a particularly large piece, about 1m x 1m the flowstone is forming from water in the rock (cliff), dissolving calcium/calcite and when it comes out of fissures in the rock, it solidifies.

This is the view you get from the end of the tourist track which heads to Pulpit rock. I’d stood up here six months ago and figured there was a cave below but couldn’t se the way down.

We found a fishermen’s track which led us down to the base of the cliff-line.

My photos don’t give you a true reflection of the change in colour from one part of the cliff to the other. Again, I think this is due to some ancient volcanic activity. The cave isn’t much to write home about, but at least we were able to find it and get an accurate GPS, no point in surveying though. (Photo: John G).

This eroded rock was part of the cliff. You’d be forgiven for thinking it was cave formation, but no, just heavily eroded rock, if you touched it, it crumbled in your fingers.

Marcia looking out to sea. When I stood at the top of these rocks, I thought “that would be a cool jump”, but nah, certain death. The rock is very interesting though, like a lava stream into the ocean.

Great contrast of the two different types of rock.

When exploring another rock outcrop, we found these strange circular indentations. I imagined that the volcano was throwing up these cannon-type balls, and they were being embedded into the lava flow. Probably not what they were but sounds good doesn’t it.

Another one, they were slightly larger than a tennis ball.

And a couple more higher up.

On the way back to our base, we ran across these two women from Victoria with a flat tyre, and they discovered that their spare was also flat. Luckily John has a compressor in his car, so he pumped the spare, only to find out that the spare also had a hole in it and wouldn’t hold the air. Fortunately, roadside assistance turned up 5 minutes later. They were going to have another hour’s wait for a tow-track to rescue them.

We drove to a parking spot before the weir, we didn’t want to drive across, just in case the river level was such that we couldn’t get back again. Onni, Marcia and I all took rain umbrellas as it was already raining!

The weir, doesn’t look bad now, and even when we came back across at the end of the day, the water was just ankle deep, but you never can tell.

We followed a NPWS track which would lead us to Merrica beach.  This section was ok, but there were a lot of fallen trees to climb over and under.

We were surprised when we came to the lagoon (the beach was daming up the river, so there was a large lagoon to cross, with no obvious way to walk around it). So, some of us stripped down a bit to stop clothes getting wet, the rest of us just went in as we were already wet. Onne & John said it was only waist deep, which for me was neck deep – someone took my pack across as it wasn’t dry-bagged.

Once across the lagoon (which you can see on the far right of the image), we went to the south to find Merrica Cave (YU76). Lots of rocks to cross, and I was very cautious because of the rain, couldn’t tell what was slippery and what wasn’t.

Continuing south along the coast looking for the cave.

We got to this ledge, a bit of a climb to get up to it, then we went along and discovered that it cliffed-out, we could go no further so had to retrace our steps back a hundred metres or so and then go higher to get around this section of rock.

We found the best spot to go up into the trees where we thought there would be a good route.

Passed another midden – boy those first nations people sure were fond of their shell fish.

By now we were high enough, but the way ahead was still dodgy. I waited where I was and let the others go along that dodgy ledge. Eventually they agreed with my estimation, it was dodgy, so came back to where I was sitting.

We headed back up into the tea tree forest again. John and Onni decided that they would go ahead and suss out to find a way to the cave. Rod, Marcia and I waited in the tea tree forest, where we were somewhat sheltered from the rain.

After half an hour waiting, Marcia was starting to feel the cold so I suggested a fire. Rod was supportive, so I managed to start a small warming fire (mostly with wet kindling and half a box of matches and some toilet paper.  By the time they got back we had a nice warm fire going, easy to put out with the wet vegetation and rain!  They had found the cave but it was too difficult to get to!

So, we retraced our steps back to the beach. I had a few oysters along the way!

Looking from the south headland of the beach, it was easy to see across to the northern headland and where we expected the bat cave to be.

The rest of the team walking over to the northern headland (Photo, John G).

At the headland we found two “canyons” and the cave. This is the first canyon.

The second canyon.  This is worthy of a number and to be surveyed, it hasn’t as yet been tagged/numbered.

And then we were able to walk to the actual cave, it was full low tide by this time, although we still had to walk through some small waves.

And here we are Merika Bat Cave (YU75).

At full low tide it was pretty impressive to get to the entrance.

Looking back to Rod as he’s coming in.

If you go all the way to the end of the cave, there’s a hard right hand bend which you can crawl along. Where the light is (Rod’s head torch), there is a NPWS notice that notifies people not to go any further as there are bats in this cave and you would be disturbing them. Rod’s the only one that went up to the sign, and then notified us and the rest of us didn’t go any further.

Photo of Marcia looking out to the entrance, it’s quite a long cave.  Exiting, I was actually bowled over by a wave, was pretty scary, I could easily have been washed up to the barnacle covered rocks and suffered some skin damage.

After we’d had our fill of the bat cave it was back across the lagoon, this time we took a slightly different route and it wasn’t so deep.

On arriving at the parking lot at the end of a very rough fire trail, we’re amazed by the smick walking track that’s been installed by NPWS.

And the impressive look-out with steps down to the rock platform. There’s a second lookout further around. Given the amount of track maintenance that’s being undertaken by NPWS, it’s my suspicion that a load of money has been thrown to this area as a result of the bushfires that went through a few years ago.

View from the second lookout. I love the way that the rock fingers extend out into the sea.

Once you go down the steps at the side of the lookout, you encounter this amazing rock platform. It was quite steep and given I hadn’t brought my Bestard shoes (grippy sole), I cautiously negotiated my way down this slope.

John looking around to the left for the cave.  We decided that we had to backtrack to the lookout and head around through the tea tree forest to find a way down.

We found a route, near what appeared to be a bush campsite, then came along all this toilet paper. There was a lot of tutting about people not “doing the right thing”, but there was so much of it, I suspect it was a bandicoot that had “stolen” the roll of toilet paper and when the bandicoot discovered it wasn’t tasty abandoned it and left it to the elements and wind.

The cave in the right-hand corner, you can see that 45° rock on the left that we’d walked down. We’ve found the cave (YU176), but it will need an abseil on a future trip (by now we’re so enchanted by the area that we’re already planning the next trip).

Poking around for anything else on the platform.

Making our way back through the tea-tree forest.

The first “cave”, not really one, but it’s a fissure and will eventually become a cave!

The second fissure.  Then we walked around to the northern side of the headland, rock hopping for 50m or so from the steps down to the beach.

And here it is the cave (YU236) that was documented as being here. Again, we did a new GPS co-ordinate, but no need to survey.

The floor of the cave was covered in an impressive amount of abalone shells. On thinking about it, I think an abalone fishing boat mored off shore, then the divers brought up the abalone and the guy on deck took out the abalone meat and threw the empty shells overboard. With years of heavy seas, the empty shells were deposited between the rocks and in the cave.

This photo shows you the depth of the cave, it’s dark at the back but is only 2 – 3m deep.

Marcia at the entrance of the cave, always good to get a shot looking out the entrance.

John and Onni headed around the headland looking for another small cave (apparently it was so narrow that Onni only just fitted into it), Marcia and I headed back up to the car.

The rain was relentless – Marcia looking down to where John and Onni would have explored.

From the parking lot and track to the cave – looking over to Eden.

John on the track down to the small headland.

Bit of a downclimb to the entrance to the cave. Looked really dodgy going down but was fine going up.

Onni continuing the downclimb to the entrance.

And making his way across to a small rocky shelf. It was at this time that I decided I wouldn’t risk this. With the swell of the incoming waves, if I had tripped or slipped, as I didn’t have a wetsuit on, my legs would be shredded by the barnacles on the side of the rock. So, I watched the others exploring :(.

Now they’re all at the cave for a photoshoot.

The cave is really amazing with pink coraline algae up to the high tide mark (the pink stuff you can see on the rocks).  It looked much better than the photo shows it.  Apparently, there were also a lot of sea creatures in the cave including sea urchins and star fish.

Management came around and asked those of us staying to move our vehicles away from the edge of the creek. Most people staying (in vans and tents), left the area, John’s annex on his caravan spat the dummy, Onni’s tent leaked a little and the creek rose up to the edge and looked like spilling over into the road, but then the tide turned and it went down pretty quickly. We’re all board game fanatics and Rod had brought a collection, so we were snug and dry.

We followed two sedans down the fire, the two cars stopped occasionally to move tree branches off the road, but when it came to these two, they gave up. So, we all backed up to a spot where you could turn around (so that they could get past us), and they retraced their steps, we parked the car, as it was only a 500m walk to the old Whaling Station.

The two previous saplings looked like they could be moved, but just around the corner we came across these ones, they def couldn’t be moved.

The cottage which was home to George & Sarah Davidson and their eight children.  Three generations of the Davidson family, between the late 1920s until the 1980s, operated a shore-based whaling station, and was the last of its type to close.

View of the house from the track down to the oil extraction site. There were a lot of fruit trees when the Davidsons where here, the historical society has planted some new ones.

There wasn’t much infrastructure left at the oil extraction site, a few of what looked like big metal stoves, and this big tub. Apparently, there have been many floods on this river and a lot of the infrastructure was lost.