Third Age Travel Adventures

Manley Beach (15th November 2014)

Mike started the morning with a session at 6am in the gym, followed by a swim in the pool and a sauna Sheila needed her beauty sleep so rose a tad later at 7:30am for breakfast.

The temperature was around 23C, quite a bit less than the previous day when it had risen to 36C.

Today we planned to meet up with Ray Merton, an old acquaintance of Mike’s, who previously ran a research group at NSW University using satellite imagery for a range of land and coastal applications.

Ray lives near Manley so we headed north. Manley can be reached by road but more easily by ferry so we headed to the Circular Quay in Perth via the circular rail link, to catch a ferry, by far the fastest route.

Manley Beach

Ray who is the vice-captain of the North Curl Curl Surf Life Saving Club (SLSC) invited us to the local SLSC Carnival but this got cancelled at the last minute so he showed us the local surf life including a life guard’s boat race and the surfskis that are a bit like a kayak.

Ray dropped us at the north end of Manley Beach and we took the coastal walk down to Shelly Beach. This beach is apparently the only west facing beach in Eastern Australia. On the route down we took a few minutes to watch an international beach volley ball match between Australia and the Cook Islands, one of a number taking place over the weekend. The Australian girls were the under-23 world champions and it didn't look as though they would be troubled by the opposition.

Australia vs Cook Island

Attack signal

Manley Beach is over 2km long but is populated along the whole length by surfers of all shapes and sizes apart, that is, from a 30m stretch restricted to swimmers and designated by two flags – clearly swimmers get a poor deal. Swimmers drifting out of this region or surfers encroaching into the swimming area get bellowed at by life-guards on the end of highly amplified loudspeakers.