Jervis Bay and Royal National Park

I know that I have been pretty sparse with updating in the last couple of weeks which is due to a lot of Uni work. But today I finally finished my last presentation and therefore my last official day of Uni, whohooo (although I still have a report due on the weekend and one exam in November). Oh yeah, there were two threats made by some anonymous person on the internet that they would bring a gun to Uni and police was on campus for a couple of days, so that was another exciting and kinda scary thing happening these past weeks…

The weekend after mid semester, me and a couple of people from USyd drove to Jervis Bay, roughly three hours south of Sydney. My friend Anja organized this trip for us and booked us an amazing house of airbnb in a small town called Vincentia. It was my first real road trip experience (in a small Fiat) in Australia. We arrived there for lunch, and after some initial grocery shopping and parrot feeding on our terrace, we headed to the beach to enjoy the last couple of hours of sunshine. In the evening, we made an amazing dinner and just socialized and chilled. On Saturday, we drove to Hyams Beach, the beach with the whitest sand in the world, which was definitely true. The beach was simply breathtaking and the sand amazingly soft and cool. The whole scene looked like it was out of a movie and we spent the whole day just lying on the beach and enjoying the sun (maybe a little too much since I got a little sunburnt). Later that day, we went to get some essential barbecue stuff and just chilled at the house. After an amazing barbecue with way too much food, me and four of the others drove down to the beach and just chilled there, did some light painting, did a bit of stargazing and I watched the others take a little night swim (I was sadly a bit sick and did not want to risk getting worse). On Sunday, we split up in two groups and while the others drove another two hours south to check out another beach, me and the rest again drove to Hyams Beach to enjoy more of the sun. After a three hour drive back to Sydney later that day (during a thunder storm) our little weekend trip was sadly already over.

For the next two weeks, nothing interesting really happened besides my roommates birthday which required us to drive to her house for an hour. It was a great party with some speeches, lots of food, a band and later on a DJ. Since me and my other roomies wanted to make it back home that same night, we had to take the train back to the Sydney around 1:30am. Since we didn’t realize what time it was, we ended up sprinting to the train station through the middle of nowhere which turned out to be quite the funny adventure (mainly because we had to take care of a really drunken Tom trying to slide down the hill through some front yards).

The rest of the week just involved a lot of group work, three business pitches and some papers that were due. On Saturday, Anja and me joined an organized trip to the Royal National Park. We left Uni around 7:15am and got to Audley, a small place in the park with a restaurant and a boat shed at around 8:30am. We started off by getting a lesson about aboriginal culture which involved a little traditional facepainting and walking through the nature to find a natural and hidden shell cave with ancient aboriginal hand prints. Then we headed off to the boat shed and got in our canoes to go down the little river into the park. It was an amazing experience since there was no one else around, the nature was beautiful and we saw a lot of animals, for example birds, turtles and geckos. Once we got to the end of the river, we went exploring though the nature, climbed some cliffs and cooled off in the water. After an hour or so we made our way back to find a prepared barbie made by our guide for us. Afterwards, we drove to Wattamolla, which is a place right at the ocean with a beautiful lagoon and waterfall. From there we started a one and a half hour hike next to the cliffs and through the bush where we found a white hidden waterhole with an amazing little waterfall. After a quick swim, we made out way back to the bus and drove back to Sydney. Overall, it was an amazing day!

Until the 18th November, I will only be working, studying and hopefully exploring Sydney and its surrounding areas a bit more and after my exam, my final travels will commence.