After returning to Lou’s from Margaret’s we had a couple of low-key days doing laundry, reorganizing stuff, and resting. The weather has been crazy for the past several days. All along the east coast and down south to Melbourne we’ve witnessed drought, intense heat (104 degrees here on Thursday), frightening thunder and lightening storms, terrible flooding as a result of heavy rains, very damaging golf ball-sized hail, and dust storms. The dust storms around the area, including at Margaret’s, have taken a toll on the environment due to the mud it caused when rained on, especially in Melbourne where the Yarra River that runs through city center turned a bright red-brown due to all the dust residue that covered every surface. The lightening has touched off more bush fires, one very near to Lou’s. Fortunately, these were quickly acted upon and are under control. But it has been wild and crazy on the weather front.
One afternoon Lou took us to Avoca Beach for a swim. It’s a lovely beach and we played in the surf for a bit. This beach allows dogs on the beach so Banjo was able to get into the water and he enjoyed running around.
We are spending our evenings watching tennis. The matches have been very exciting and Christine, Lou and I agonizing practically over every point with loud ohs, wows, grunts and sighs. We tire ourselves out just watching.
After a couple of days of not doing much, I felt a need to get some walking in. I suggested to Christine another leg of the Bouddi Coastal Walk. We looked at the map, and after much deliberation, we decided to walk down the trail we came up on our first walk, go around Maitland Bay, go up the headland and then work our way up the Mt. Bouddi Spur Trail to the Dingeldei Picnic Area where Lou could pick us up. We knew if would be a rather strenuous walk but I wanted to give it a go.
Lou dropped us off at the Maitland Bay Info Center car park and off we went. Within one minute, Christine wanted to turn around and go back because we invaded by “mozzies,” mosquitoes in Aussie vernacular. We were covered by tiny, black insects. They were smaller than our mosquitoes, but they drew blood when biting. It was awful. I suggested we keep going because I thought getting closer to the ocean would provide a breeze and some relief. I cut off a couple of tree branches to use as mozzie brooms. Christine sped off down the trail trying to get away from the mozzies. Every person we passed coming up had something to say about the mozzies. We think the recent rain with the very high humidity the day we walked caused the outbreak, but it was really awful.
It was hard to enjoy the walk through the bush, but I did take some photos of the great trees and foliage.
Great gum tree Christine practically running down the trail A nice trail through the bush Cycad plant
We got down to Maitland Beach, a very nice beach. One needs to be quite motivated to swim there because there is no car park anywhere near the beach. One has to hike down that steep track and then after a day on the beach, you have to hike all the way back up. Not an easy thing, for sure.
Headland of Maitland Beach Maitland Beach, a wonderful ocean beach View up the beach
As we were walking down the beach to pick up the coastal walk trail we came to exposed sandstone. It was so interesting because the exposed rock showed some of the interesting patterns called Leisgang rings, but these were vertical and not horizontal as we saw on our first walk.
Exposed sandstone on the beach Fantastic patterns Great designs Looks like a lizard
On the beach with my mozzie branch Christine with her mozzie tool
At the far end of Maitland Beach is some other rock formations.
End of Maitland Beach Rubble from the sandstone cliff Great patterns on the rock View under the rock out to the bay
At the end of the beach the coastal walk heads uphill. What a lot of steps to get up to the headland.

After going up and up, we finally came to a beautiful spot with great views of the coastline. We sat enjoying the breeze for a while and cooled off.
View back down the beach Rock shelf at the base of the headland Rugged coastline Christine taking in the view
We then found the trail again and headed up more steps. We walked quite a way trying to locate the spur trail that would take us up to the pickup spot. We eventually found it and headed back into the bush.
The Mt. Bouddi Spur trail is nearly straight uphill all with steps, not cement formed steps, but logs placed along the trail. Many of those steps are double height, so it’s a real effort to pull one’s body up them. It was exhausting, and it kept going up and up. We eventually got to a more level place and the trail through the bush was quite lovely, but again the mozzies and our exhaustion made it difficult to enjoy.
Steps, steps, steps Trail through rocks Nearing the top
We finally made it to the top and the pickup spot. Lou was sitting in his car. He said he tried to sit outside but that the mozzies nearly ate him alive. So he was sympathetic when we described our ordeal with the mozzies. Christine and I were really red-faced from the effort so Lou took us to the ocean for a swim. We went to MacMasters Beach. The surf was quite rough. Christine got knocked down, which rattled her, so she skipped playing in the surf. Unfortunately, the surf had churned up great clumps of seaweed so it was rather difficult to keep from getting tangled up. After a few times of getting crunched by the surf, twice losing my sand shoe (which both times turned up to be found and returned to me), I decided to forego any further wave jumping. But the swim cooled us off and that was lovely.
Home we went to spend another evening watching incredible tennis matches at the Aussie Open.