Nice to meet you, Mr. Pacific Ocean

This weekend the Exchange Office at the University of Canberra organized a beach trip to take about 50 of us poor, pitiful inland students to get properly acquainted with an Australian beach.  We met at 7 a.m. to ride a chartered bus down to Broulee Beach near Bateman's Bay-- a two and a half hour drive through beautiful countryside.  There are so many rolling hills bulging straight out of flat plains, and more sheep than I have ever seen in my life.  

We had to cross the Great Dividing Range, which proved to be quite a challenge for our bus that did seem to approve of the hairpin curves and steep inclines.  On the other side of the range was a rain forest, not a tropical rain forest, more like the Washington kind, which was really neat to see!  The eucalyptus trees there have white bark and leaves only on the tops of the tree, then on the floor were huge ferns probably reaching four or five feet tall, sort of reminding me of Jurassic Park.  We watched Australian movies on our trips to and fro, Rabbit Proof Fence on the way and Tomorrow when the War Began on the return trip, both of which I highly recommend.

We made it to the coast before 10 and hit the beach!  The place was SOOOOOOOOOOO beautiful!  The sand was not as fine as what I have been around and it was mixed with so many different colors, then the water was so clear and blue!  Absolutely lovely.  We were in a small bay, so if you see how the beach goes around and there's an island kind of area far away?  That part is relevant later.  We also saw some black cockatoos, which I was told are rare.

 

It was overcast all day and about 27 degrees, so according to my XKCD guide to metric conversion that is slightly cooler than beach weather, but it was very nice!  The UV rays here are quite ferocious, so even without direct sunshine most of us came away a shade of pink (Yes, Mother, I put on sunscreen).  The water was a bit chilly, but great once you got out in it.  The waves were definitely more exciting than in Gulf Shores and some folks went to rent wet suits and surf boards.  There was a short bridge in another little inlet we stumbled upon, so we had fun jumping off of it and swimming around in the calm area.  

The "alligator" rock formation.
Eh, it was more convincing in person

Around noon, Domino's delivered pizza to us on the beach and we took a break for food, played volleyball and decided to go for a walk.  Remember the picture earlier with the far away place?  Yeah, we decided to go there.  It probably took around 20 minutes to get there walking with purpose and not letting ourselves get too distracted since we only had an hour before we had to head back to Canberra.

It was TOTALLY worth the hike!  Apparently the area was a nature reserve of sorts, with  a huge shallow area with interesting rocks and some tide pools.

 This is our victorious group.  We were pretty proud of ourselves for finding such a cool spot.  All in all, beach day was HEAPS of fun!  There will be plenty of beach time in the future- Hopefully Sydney next weekend and Surf Camp later in March!