Bondi to Maroubra August 2013

I don't want this to be a strictly walking blog, there's a shit load of those online already, and a lot have better photo's or wittier writing than I am capable of. While my hobbies are Bushwalking and Mountain bike riding, my better half Sam and I also enjoy doing the usual tourist things, staying in nice hotels, going to the beach, and generally chilling out away from work. On my multi day journals I include the 'off days' (the days of travel before or after the walks, days playing tourist, etc) so I'll do the same on my blog.

The Bondi to Maroubra coastal walk.

Late last August we found ourselves up in Sydney preparing to leave on a cruise around the South Pacific, with an afternoon to kill and a new camera to try we decided to head down to Bondi and walk the coastal track down to Maroubra. Armed with notes out of John and Monica Chapman's, Day Walks in Sydney book we headed off south towards the Bondi Baths. Looking back now I'm not sure what happened on this walk, but I seem not to have taken many photo's, maybe they were all crap and I deleted them, I don't know.

There are views like this almost the whole walk

A short section of the track heads into the suburbs to avoid some private cliff top properties.

A rough section of the track around Lurline Bay

The walk itself is a cracker, beautiful views almost the entire way, it seemed like most of Sydney's beautiful people thought so to, its not often you see so much Lycra and bare skin on a bushwalk. The day was warm enough that quite a few people were out swimming and enjoying the beaches.We basically followed the coast south the whole way to Maroubra, only heading into suburbia around South Coogee to bypass some private property. After a relaxing four hour stroll of about 12 kilometres we rounded Mistral Point and Maroubra Beach started to come into view. In my mind Maroubra is famous for two things, the first being the Bra Boys, the notorious surf gang, and secondly the Maroubra Seals Club, most of my favourite rock bands made a career of touring through there.

Some of the wildlife

Maroubra Beach

If anyone wants some information on the walk go to http://www.john.chapman.name/index.html  its walk #40 in their Sydney Walks book. After grabbing a cold drink we were soon on the bus back to Circular Quay, dropping the gear off in the hotel, we headed down to the docks to go on a tour of the Sea Shepherd boat, the Sam Simon, ironically the boat was bought from the Japanese whalers for Sea Shepherd by an agent without the whalers being aware of who was buying it.

Sea Shepherd are in town

Dinner that night was in The Rocks, before we headed back to The Marriott for an early night. Tomorrow we'd be off to Hawaii and Tahiti among other exotic ports.

That's the back of Sam's head on the free Sea Shepherd tour.

We stayed at The Marriott, as seen from the upper deck of the Sam Simon

The view from the hotel