Today , Wednesday , the sun was shining , it was the pick of the days - today was the day . We packed lunch & gear and headed off for a drive to Duke of Orleans Bay . We'd been told about this place and how good it was - prior to yesterday we hadn't heard of it - no advertising , nothing !
Well as it turns out this place has beaches that rival Lucky Bay . The drive took us through grazing land and of course wheat fields , before taking us to the coast again . The first track was to Table Island , separated from the mainland by a thin strip of shallow water that can be walked through at low tide , or anytime if you don't mind getting a bit damp . This is the view of the island and duke of Orleans Bay .
Another rather large granite rock poking out of the ocean .
We jumped back in the ute , it was too windy to fly the drone - shame - but the next stop took our breath away ! We left the bitumen and headed up a gravel road over the hill to this view . I climbed onto the back of the ute for a better view .
This is Little Wharton Beach at the end of the gravel road , we parked down on a rock shelf 5m from the water . A short beach - about 300m long - ended at some more rocks , although there was a track that went up the hill and further on to some other locations - probably equally as stunning as this !!
Banksia's love this place too - wall to wall down to the water .
The wind had dropped - ohhh what a shame , the drone came out again , check these out !
Little Wharton Beach is down on the left of photo .
We had some lunch , talked to a couple from Brisbane , then a couple from The Gold Coast , before heading back up the track . There was a track that we didn't even see on the way in , so in we went . We had 360 degree views from the top of another granite dome . This is an island that got my attention - it seemed strange that it had sand dunes on top of a granite rock ! Behind the island is Frenchman Peak and Cape Le Grand NP .
Just because we can , we did , here we are !
Just over the hill was Wharton Beach - a superb stretch of beach curving into the distance .
We made our way down onto the beach , yes onto the beach - Lyn loves a challenge - it wasn't much of a challenge however , this sand is so fine and it packs down that well , we hardly left any tread tracks .
Yes the drone came out again after a bit of a walk up & down the beach , people were swimming and stand up paddle boarding and playing on the beach , others were attempting to catch fish . Here as well , was a pod of dolphins that had been interacting with people - they would swim up to and around the people then swim away again - apparently this had been going on for a few hours .
And here they are , there was about 12 dolphins cruising around .
They were swimming on their sides , upside down , jumping and playing , just beautiful .
We dragged ourselves away , suffering from visual overload - we had got to the point where it was getting too much .
Back down to Table Island , the drone came out again , this is the view down over the shallows from above the island .
We headed back the 65 klms to the van totally satisfied with our days exploits - what an amazing place - we would rate Wharton Beach as BETTER than Lucky Bay - no wonder we hadn't heard of it before , the locals don't want anyone to know about this part of the coast .
To be fair , it was perfect weather , Lucky Bay would have been just as good today - nearly ! Hahaha
Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wavI-FGc8-7aMp3efliHKNH989gbJX1p&usp=sharing
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