The Dolphin Underwater Club’s Okura Kayak and Barbeque
Planning a winters fun day is always a challenge with the weather we have been experiencing over the past few weeks.
As it turned out the weather was perfect, tide right and fifteen of us out there enjoying ourselves.
A fair bit of organizing with getting kayaks, paddles and life jackets for everyone and then heading to the ramp on the Okura Estuary.
A couple being their first-time paddlers and young seven-year-old Kayden in a kayak on his own. The smiles and happy faces couldn’t be bigger.
As we set off the sun was shining, the tide was still coming in and the water was a beautiful reflective calm with loads of bird song around. Many endangered birds visit the area and nest on the sandbank each year. We have the unwanted noisy Australian plover, but others like the migrating broadbill sandpiper, and bar tailed godwits, pied oyster catchers and royal spoonbill.
As the estuary is a part of the Long Bay/Okura Marine Reserve there were plenty of mullet and small stingray darting around. At times we have seen small sharks, dolphin and orca have been known to visit for a feed of stingray.
After a kayak through the mangroves the group returned to the ramp to load up and bring the kayaks back for a wash and join in the barbeque with an open fire and the thermette boiling for a coffee, also a first for some.
Total fun day, we will have to do it more often.
Thanks to Bob Shaw for lending us his two kayaks and Peter Townend from Canoe and Kayak for seeing everyone else into a kayak with life jackets and paddles.