Bay of Fires

Having made it to St Helens by late afternoon we decided to visit the bay of fires. All our glossy tourist mags had breath-taking images of bright red rocks and pure white sand. Surely it couldn't be true...

15 minutes out from St Helens we were there. We chose a side-street to drive down and ventured cross-country in our trusty mazda. It turns out the bay of fires is where the locals go to hide from the tourists during the silly season. Boy were the locals glad to see us! We ignored the banjo's and made a b-line for the beach. Wow!!



In situations like this you find yourself doing crazy things like photographing landscapes in portrait! How MAD!!!



It must have been the salt in the air or something.

The locals sniggered at us, with our silly car and photographic ways, but we ignored them and ventured on. The next road took us to a parking lot with a caravan that looked like it had been there for a long time. There were the remains of a fire and a dog sleeping on it's own swab of foam. It was like a scene from a John Wayne movie. We turned around, MadHatter drove over their fire, the dog looked on in disgust...
the next road took us down to the main beach. This was by far the most impressive.



I was still in crazy portrait mode. We took way too many photos.



Like this one. It's seaweed. I'm sure you really needed to see it...



This is what the beach looked like. The rock in the foreground is covered in baby mussels (favourite food of the Snapper!).

The beach became a little less appealing when the teenage guys turned up on their trail bike. Yaa for trail bikes, almost as annoying as jetskis! ;-)
As we left one of the teenagers flooded the bike, then dropped it, then got it stuck in the soft sand. Heh, the beach fights back :-)

Then we ventured to the end of the road, to a place called the garden. It was very rocky and very cool.



It looked like a fisho' place. I like fisho' places :-)



Obligatory ocker photo...



On the way back to St Helens we stopped at a veeeery nice restaurant for dinner. I can't remember the name but I'm sure MadHatter will remind me. She of course took one of their cards like the uber-networker that she is ;-) I opted not to take a card and now really wish I had coz' I can't remember the name of the place....

Oh, and while driving back from the bay of fires we saw a roo hopping across the road. It was like we were bonding with the wild-life (from a safe distance).

Next stop Launceston, which can be pronounced as it's written, or as 'luncheontown', or 'lanceston', or 'lauseston', or any combination of the above ;-)