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11.21 132.55 De Courcy Head  60km 7 to 5.5 found a petrified penis, 3 m high! A touch too much for now, though desperate…

From my last campsite on the Macquarie Strait I cut across Aurari Bay to Brodgen and Gningarg Point. This was the easy part of the day, though tide against wind again…

I knew the whole eastern side of that area had quite some cliffs, and the few beaches were surfy and with dumpers…what was the choice? I could paddle surely into the night to get around the top for a safe landing, but I’m not really keen to paddle around racy headlands at night, not knowing how the landing would be.

The cliffs were really beautiful, quite high with about 70 m or so and stunning. The backwash was moderate, but still the roughest paddle since the BIG crossing of the Gulf. It gave me some thoughts about the upcoming three sets of cliffs with no landing for 160-180 km….but they are later on the trip.

After Gningarg Point I followed the coast instead of cutting across the next bay as usual. I needed to see what the beach landing would be like. And actually, right on the first edge of a high sand dune area the landing was pretty sheltered. It would have been easy to go in, but it was 4.30 pm only, 55 km covered, simply too early to land. 1 1/2 hr of daylight left, so I gave it a go to paddle to the last beach on the eastern side until last light, 60 km, thinking the landing would be probably a surf landing, but it can’t be that bad…

It got a challenging nice paddle over that hour, as the swell was lifting quite a bit as the water got shallow upfront the dunes and beaches. But it still looked ok for landing, not worse than anything I handled already with no problems on the East Coast way further south.

On the very last sanddune around the last spit in a bit of a recessed bay with a bit more quiet water I eventually decided it’s time to go in now, although De Courcy Head was only 4,5 km away. But this was not really a sheltered beach already, to find fully quiet water I would have to go around Cape Cockburn. There was supposed to be an “ok” beach on the north end of the spit, but landing there in darkness…so I went in through quite some surf, but I timed it allright and didn’t get a drop of water in my face.

I reckoned it can be only easier and more calm next morning…

I spotted already this interesting shaped rock from the distance, and this was another reason to go in on THAT beach NOW – I needed to take a picture and a closer look! It was really an outstanding specimen of penis-shaped rock! Even with some balls and (water) hair…or what would you think??? Don’t tell me I’m just needy and have hallucinations…