A walk of failures

 After our walk along the clifftops from Betka to Pebbly Beach we chatted with our friend Caroline about the possibility of getting to the next beach East of Quarry Beach at sea level.  She has done this at low tide and said it needs low tide and some luck.  The low tide forecast for 19 April was about as low as it gets for quite a while (although, at 0.16m, still a fair  bit above the 0.06m recorded in January-February).  So we decided to give it a go.

Here is a snip from Google Earth.  Airport Cove is the target.

The green line is my guess at the tide line on the day: the satellite snap must have been a very low tide.

The first issue that arose was that I had not realised that I had taken the SD card out of my small camera in the process of getting my new camera.  Fortunately I had my phone with me so a few photos were possible.

The first image is looking back to the West (ie towards the far end of Quarry Beach).

This is looking East - Airport Cove is on the far side of the headland.  It was obvious that wading around was not going to be possible.

At Quarry Beach with an inclination towards geology a photo of these strata is always taken.

A rocky outcrop on the beach seemed to have weathered very differently to those nearby.

They seem to have split along the lines of sedimentation.  It sort of reminds me of the appearance of onion exfoliation shown by granite boulders but I expect it is a very different process.

Pancake rock and friend, looking very different than when looked at from the clifftop.

I decided to have a shot at going over the headland as going around was not possible. I got about 2/3 of the way and it seemed to be getting a bit iffy for climbing up and with the rock being wet and  reasonable waves coming in ....

... I decided that whatsit was the better part of thingamyjig and retreated.  An unusually sensible decision for me.  The waves and clouds looked nice.

Having got looks of time on our hands (not that we were actually on a formal schedule) I went round to the SW corner of the airport to see if I could stir up some Beautiful Firetails.  Another failure, but at least I didn't try driving through the bog at the corner and get stuck (a likely outcome the way my luck was running).