One of my favourite things to do in life is kayaking. I owned a kayak for over twenty years, but when I started this house-sitting tour of Australia I sold it along with our house and car. For many years I had that kayak but little time to use it – now I have the time, and I certainly have the place here in Tasmania, which is a kayaker’s paradise, but I have no kayak! This is why I was excited to find that I was able to borrow a kayak while staying at Snug Beach. Using it was the highlight of my stay, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as I explored the local waterways.
The kayak
This kayak is a very short, wide, and ultra-stable boat, which means that it's good for beginners (or fishing) but it's hard work to push through the water, especially when the wind comes up and it gets a bit choppy, but I didn’t care because it’s just so wonderful to be out on the water, especially on such a beautiful waterways!
Here’s a picture of the kayak on the beach at Snug, set up and ready to go for a paddle:
The views from the kayak
Snug is a wonderful place for kayaking with protected waterways; beautiful sandstone cliffs; clear water; seagrass and weed beds, and rocky reefs to glide over. The surrounding geographical features include Bruny Island, Tinderbox and Conningham peninsulas, and the ever-present Kunanyi (Mount Wellington) in the background.
These are some of the sandstone cliffs near Snug Beach, which have eroded into fantastic shapes:
The cliffs have been eroding for a long time, probably thousands of years, and the blocks of sandstone, some of them huge, have fallen into the sea and been colonised by oysters and seaweed, so they make lovely reefs to glide over on the clear water. They’re hard to photograph, especially when using a phone camera, which is all I take out on the kayak, but this one gives you the idea:
Here are some spectacular clouds over Kunanyi (Mount Wellington) in the distance (more about the ship in the foreground later):
Here’re the cliffs at Snug Bay, shaded from the morning light, with Tinderbox on the other side of North-West Bay in the background:
This view is looking across the waters of North-West Bay to Tinderbox on the left and Bruny Island on the right:
I had several trips out on the kayak – I’ll tell you about my favourite and most exiting trip in my next post.
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