The White Sands of Jervis Bay

Since I’ve met Suz we’ve talked about lots of different things, one of them is where the whitest sand beach might be! I’ve always told her that it has to be one of the beaches I saw in Thailand, on the Similan Islands, and she tells me that she thinks it’s down in Jervis Bay.

Well, let’s go and have a look! We took off from Sydney and headed south (Jervis Bay is around 3 hours south of Sydney), we pulled over at Berry on our way down and had a look at a very cool sign post with directions to many different places….and a weird building covered with hub caps, odd to say the least!

A while later we reached our destination in Jervis Bay, Huskisson, where we would be sleeping. Huskisson is a plastic bag free town, which means that you won’t be given a plastic bag anywhere, not even after shopping (you get a paper bag). This is to ensure that the plastic bags don’t end up in the ocean where they’ll kill sea animals.

After parking the car we had to walk around for quite a bit before we actually found the entrance to our place. We weren’t staying at a hotel but at a Serviced Apartment. After asking around we managed to find the place and dropped our bags off.

Exploring the area and it’s beaches was fun but not great, since the day was overcast it was hard to see the whiteness in the beach, we just had to hope for some sun later on.

We spent the rest of our day just relaxing and not doing much. Since we were at a costal town we tried some of the local fish and chips (grilled fish though, can’t stand the battered one) while sitting on our balcony that faced the main street of town.

The next morning I started out by going on a boat and doing two dives at the sites; The Docks and Slot Cave. This were actually my first real dives in Australia (I had been in the water before with full gear on, but that was during my Rescue course, when the temperature of the water was a chilling 14C) so I was quite exited and was really looking forward to the dives.

I jumped in the water and sank to the bottom and the very first thing I see is a Weedy Seadragon, looks similar to a sea horse, and they’re normaly quite hard to see (when you are actually looking for them). At the end of the dive I also spotted a shark, only a juvenile one but still!

The second dive contained mostly the same as the first, loads of Sea Tulips, Stone Fishes, Leatherbacks but I managed to find another seadragon, a big Ray and also a very playful big blue Groper that just didn’t want to leave us.

Once we got back to main land I cleaned the equipment, had a quick clean of myself and then Suz (who had been waiting on land) and I took off to check out the white beach, today the sun was out and the beach had better live up to the hype.

Well, what can I say….it definately did!! Hyams beach must be one of the whitest beaches in the world, it’s just amazingly soft and beautiful! Worth all the talks about it.

And the comparison between this beach and the one in Thailand….well, I’ll have to take Suz there first, then we’ll be able to compare them both!