Photo shows the Gold Coast's Broadwater and the nearby Pacific Ocean separated by South Stradbroke Island and the Southport Spit. Exit out from the Broadwater into the ocean is via the Seaway, a dredged channel that lies between island and Spit.

We are on a mooring in Iluka Harbour on the north side of the Clarence River in New South Wales, but leaving for the next safe anchorage south tomorrow.



Sundari in a very well protected spot in Iluka Bay near the rainforested coast within the Clarence River.



Sundari anchored near the barred entrance to the Clarence River - a lovely spot!

The New South Wales coast as we well know is beautiful, but in a different way to its northern neighbour. Gone are the myriads of islands and the coral of the Great Barrier Reef. In their place are great sweeps of beautiful beaches that lie between low headlands. This pattern is punctuated at regular intervals by rivers flowing into the Pacific from the Great Dividing Range that lies at some way inland.



Iluka Beach, typical of NSW's lovely surf beaches.

The NSW coast is readily accessed by car, although you can't see much of it by driving along the main north south highway, the Pacific Motorway. You have to keep deviating off the main drag to find the national parks, beaches and small coastal towns.

By boat, it's a different matter. There are few anchorages along the coast that can be accessed at any stage of the tide or wind direction. Most of the potential anchorages are in rivers that are entered over a bar. These bars are shallow and all potentially dangerous when the tide is ebbing against even a moderate wind or swell. Once you are in, you are never sure when you can get out again and, in summer, there is always the possibility that heavy rain in the headwaters sends a murky, swirling flood downstream.



Looking straight out through the river entrance. The "bar" is not even breaking. It's in temporary benign mode because of low swell and incoming tide, but it can swiftly become very nasty at other times!

Of course, every downside has an upside. Travelling by your own boat reduces the cost of visiting this part of Australia's east coast. Once anchored in a protected spot off a beach with few or no neighbours and only dolphins, ospreys and turtles for company, the pain of getting there melts away. Ashore, the busy summer crowds at the coastal seaside towns seem far away. The commercial campgrounds are heaving with summer holidaymakers, all cheek by jowl and paying through the nose for the privilege of renting a tiny piece of retail turf. Meanwhile, on the boat, there is nothing to pay and everything to enjoy.

We left the Gold Coast 10 days ago, without a grand plan of where we would end up. Maybe we won't get any further south than Sydney, or maybe we will make it all the way down to Tasmania. Hopefully, we will find a suitable mooring to rent while we make our planned overseas trips next year before sailing north again.

We had an easy overnight 90 nautical mile passage from the Gold Coast down to the Clarence River, the fourth in a series from the border (the Tweed, Brunswick and Richmond rivers were all passed). We have never been south of the Clarence by yacht - the last time we were here was not long after we bought Saraoni in 1998. We had sailed south after buying Saraoni in Airlie Beach and were ready to set off across the Tasman at the next port south of here (Coffs Harbour - a Customs port). Our plans turned 180o after being offered jobs in Darwin and we didn't actually make it over to New Zealand until a few years later.

The Clarence is a lovely area to explore and it would be easy to spend all summer here. The small towns of Iluka on the north shore and Yamba on the south shore have all the services you need and it's possible to sail 40 miles up the river to Maclean and Grafton, two towns we have passed through many times by car before. While here we have biked through the Iluka Rainforest Reserve, and up to Iluka Bluff and Woody Head on the Pacific coast north of the river, then from Yamba south to Angourie, where the Green and Blue Pools make nice natural swimming holes and where the 6 day Yuraygir Coastal walk starts. We have also been to and fro across the Clarence between Iluka and Yamba, bussed it up to Grafton and back and kayaked along the Esk River after dinghying it up through a labyrinth of mangrove channels from Iluka. The Esk is a narrow freshwater river that penetrates the wilderness of Bundjalung National Park that stretches north of Iluka.



Iluka is well known for its stretch of coastal rainforest, one of very few areas of this sort of habitat left on the lower east coast, We have been anchored or moored right next to it for the last 10 days!



Water lillies on the Esk River, a tannin stained waterway penetrating the wild heart of Bundjalung National park.



Yamba is a rapidly growing coastal town across the river from slumbering little Iluka, approached from the river through a narrow channel between sand banks and beach lined islands.



Selection of denizens encountered around the Clarence: from top left:
goanna at Woody Head, osprey with its prey
kookaburra with a snack, superb fairy wren
plover chick, water dragon.