Tura Beach

Possibly stretching the definition of Mallacoota a tad!  We were planning a trip to Merimbula and Frances found a walk at Tura Beach which looked interesting.  So we headed off, expecting to find a sign to the walk.  That didn't happen but Google Maps were our friend so we had a tour of the area on the way to the start of the walk. 

We wondered about the nature of the residents and the occupancy of houses.  In this case, the Census is our friend, looking at the suburb of Tura Beach.  To begin with, the area looked well maintained and affluent.  It had 3,400 usual residents in 2021, approximately 3x the number of Mallacoota (which was a surprise in itself).  (I don't think the comparison is greatly affected by the Black Summer fire: Mallacoota was well on the way to recovery by August 2021.

• In terms of age of the residents of Tura Beach 47.6% were aged 60+ (Mallacoota 49.7%).  
• 44% of the residents of Tura Beach were not in the Labour Force (Mallacoota 40.4%)
• Looking at Tenure type (TEND), both areas had a high percentage of properties owned outright.  The major difference is the proportion of dwellings with a TEND of "Not Applicable" - effectively vacant dwelling at Census time.  For Tura Beach 14.7% of dwellings had this TEND, while for Mallacoota it was 28.8%.  I think this is a proxy for "holiday house".

The start of the walk was on Headland Drive, on the Northern end of the settlement.  Here is our track, as recorded on eBird.

This is the view from a lookout at '1' in the map

Zooming in to the houses: not many tall trees in the gardens- people like their view!

A rocky outcrop below the lookout.

A view North, towards Bournda.  Any European readers may wish to look at that length of sand: that is a beach, cf the 100m of shingle at places like Brighton in the UK.

The rocky cliff at point 2.

A view of the pool at the end of the walk (point 3).

The red rock here reminds me of that at the headland at the mouth of the harbour at Merimbula (not that far to the South).

The vegetation along the track walking back.