First Impressions of Batemans Bay

Our trip to Batemans Bay on the South Coast of New South Wales started on Friday afternoon with a  four and half hour drive from Pamela’s parents house in Carcoar. The mostly small country roads wound through beautiful scenery including rich farmland, lush rainforest and rolling foothills. With five minutes to spare for check-in we pulled into the Moorings Resort, our home for the next two weeks, and were given the keys to our two bedroom apartment style room.

The Moorings Resort, situated  in the small town of Tomakin and on the banks of the Tomaga River, is very basic in nature. Semi-clean grounds, a sandy tennis court and an indoor solar heated pool (it’s not really heated) are the highlights of the resort. Lowlights of the resort include the proximity to the main road which can be noisy, very small television and the lack of an oven are really the only things we can gripe about so really we don’t have much to gripe about at all.

With 83 unique beaches, several national parks, plenty of rivers and lakes this outdoor paradise of New South Wales called the Eurobodalla Coast is branded the ‘Land of Many Waters’ and for good reason. Seemingly around every corner lies a new pristine beach, slow moving river or calm inducing lake. This region, lying about four hours drive south of Sydney, stretches from the town of Shoalhaven in the north to Tilba in the south and is full of small town charm. Holiday activities in the area are abundant and include snorkeling, skydiving, cuddling wombats, gallery tours and big game fishing. Basically, if you have a pulse you should be able to find something to do around here.

After checking into our hotel and unloading our very-packed car we realized we were starving so we jumped back in the car and headed north. About 10 minutes later we were ordering take away fish and chips from a beachside café in the small town of Malua Bay. We spread out our beach blanket and ate our food on the beach watching the surf roll in; perfection.

Saturday morning we woke-up and paid a visit to small but mighty Guerilla Bay for a snorkel. This small beach and two secluded bays are in the Batemans Bay Marine Park and therefore protected nature reserves. The snorkeling in the calm bay was pretty good and consisted of many colorful fish and some corals although I wish I’d had a wetsuit as the water was a little cool for my liking and too cold for Pamela.  If  snorkeling isn’t your cup of tea then you can sunbake, look for shells or take in the beautiful surrounding views.

Following our morning at Guerilla Bay we headed down to the beach at North Head Maruya. Adjacent to the small Maruya airport we were able to watch the skydivers coming in just above us.  The long, uninhabited beach was perfect for relaxing until the wind kicked up and covered us with sand forcing us to make a quick exit to the car and on to crowded but wind free Broulee Beach. Broulee is perfect for lounging on the beach, snorkeling or swimming in the calm and patrolled crystal blue waters. Walking around the point at Broulee takes you to another more private beach with equally pristine waters connecting to Broulee island with bushwalking trails and a reported Emu or two. Fully cooked from the sun we headed back to our resort for a dip in the pool, and a game of tennis before dinner.

Sunday morning we made our favourite ‘Haloumi Slam’ consisting of poached eggs on top of buttered toast with avocado, fried haloumi cheese and a squeeze of lime. Completely satisfied from breakfast we headed 20 minutes north to Murramarang National Park where we spent the better part of the day lounging on beautiful Pebbly Beach. The park, famous for its kangaroo beaches,  is home to a beautiful rainforest and several unspoiled beaches which are inhabited by grazing kangaroos at dusk and dawn. Although we didn’t see any kangaroos (we were there at midday) we did see quite a bit of kangaroo crap on the grass next to the beach so we know the little hoppers are around. The best thing about these beaches are the lack of people, we were there on a Saturday and felt like we had the place to ourselves.

So far our first impressions of the Batemans Bay area are very good. The small town feel, empty beautiful beaches (remember there’s 83 of them) and lush national parks are the stuff Australian dreams are made of. We’re so looking forward to spending the next 10 days exploring more of the area and quite frankly are going to have a tough time fitting in all that we want to do in that time period. Hopefully our next report will include us catching a fish and a wave.

Sorry about the lack of photos in this article. Unfortunately we're only able to utilize a terrible Wifi connection at a McDonalds about 15 minutes drive from our resort. We'll get some photos in ASAP.

Cheers for Now –

Pamela and Dave