Today, I headed off for Angourie, a small town that’s big for surfers.

I’m not a surfer, so I was more interested in the Angourie Pools.  In 1890, bluestone mining started up very near the beach, with two main quarries.  But in 1899, freshwater from an underground spring flooded the pits, and the quarry was abandoned.  So now, Angourie has two freshwater swimming pools right next to the beach – the Blue Pool, and the Green Pool.

The Blue Pool:

This was the first pool I passed on the walking track.  There were signs warning about variable water quality, and given that I have skin sensitive to chemicals and irritation, I thought I’d pass up actually swimming in favour of just dangling my feet in the water.  So even if I do get a nasty rash or something, at least it’s not all over me.

Then I walked the rest of the path to the beach.  All two metres of it.  As you can see, it was a different beach than I’m used to:

There was no straight shot to the ocean, not with that wall there.  But there were still rock pools and sand behind the wall, so I took a wander.

Walking along the beach, I passed the Green Pool:

I spotted a little hill and climbed up it to have a look around.  I was greeted by a juvenile Pied Butcherbird at the top:

The view from the top:

Then I turned back, deciding to take a little stroll through the bush to Spooky Beach.  No, I have no idea why it’s called that – all the informative signs are strangely silent on this point.  Were there claims of a haunting here?  Some kind of huge disaster that people would expect to cause a haunting?  Or was it just the last name of some upstanding member of the community?  It seems we’ll never know.

The usual landscapes:

Check out this tree:

It seemed to have a lot more branches than anything else.  It looked like it should be called the Grandfather Tree or something.

I spotted a pied currawong:

And a Large-Billed Scrubwren:

As I approached the beach, I found a tiny little creek by the side of the path.

I crept closer, because I thought I saw fish in it.  Except they weren’t fish:

Tadpoles!  They have clear underbellies as well, so it means that whatever species they are, they’re not cane toads.

I also got a video of a dragonfly:

Finally, I came to Spooky Beach:

No, I’ve never seen anything less spooky, either.  Beaches just don’t make you feel scared – even Jaws had the sense to set the scariest parts on the open ocean at night.

I sat on the beach for a little while, just listening to the waves.  Then I re-traced my steps back to the car, and headed on back to Turtle Shell.