Sunday 2018-12-30

Today we visited Narooma to the south, principally to look at Australia Rock and the Glasshouse Rocks, just offshore.

We briefly stopped in Bodalla on the way, but unfortunately the vinyl I’d discovered last week was gone. 

We made good time through the dairy land, and approached Narooma via a familiar feeling box-bridge.

Once into town, we followed the 50 km/hr road through the streets to a main roundabout where we headed for the marina.

After a leisurely prowl through the waterside, we came to the headland principally occupied by a giant breakwater.

Immediately opposite the breakwater is a medium sized beach which is evidentially where everyone goes for safe swimming. 

Outside the breakwater a strong swell caused some impressive waves to hit the headlands.

Australia Rock

You can almost literally drive right up to it – well, close enough.  We parked just shy of the steps that lead up to observation/lookouts atop the headland.  It was a super short walk to the rock & breakwater.

One look at it should be all you need to understand why it is named as it is..

It’s a lot more interesting than the photos depict.  Naturally, Jake and Damian climbed down and got too close to the crashing waves for my liking.  There were a handful of people around, but they remained hard to shoot photos around.

Another tourist kindly offered to take a photo of Jake and I together, so I appear here on the other side of the lens for a change.

The boys and Toni headed for the lookout while I pinched this panorama from the breakwater.

A view from above – the lookouts didn’t offer as fascinating views, but the exercise was worth it.

Glasshouse Rocks

We stopped at the children’s park before heading further south.  We made a quick pit stop at Narooma Plaza (4pm) for supplies as it’d been a while since lunch.

Once we were on our way, we followed the Princes Hwy south and turned off at Glasshouse Rocks Rd, passing industrial sites & hardware stores on our way east.

You can’t just drive to the Glasshouse rocks, but you can get close enough for a long distance view..

The most vehicle friendly way was to drive to a seaside cemetery, and walk from there.

So we did just that.  It was interesting to see so many “fresh” burials (1-2 decades ago) mixed in with some that were 100+ years old.

The offshore “rocks” are presumably named “glasshouse” since they somewhat resemble the large hills in QLD of the same/similar name.

Where does “glass house” originate?

Whilst the traditional names for the hills themselves are very old, the term ‘Glasshouse Mountains’ was given more recently by explorer Captain James Cook on 17 May 1770.

The peaks reminded him of the glass furnaces in his home county of Yorkshire

Here are NSW’s diminutive offshore versions for you:

With that, we returned north to call it a day.