Farewell Jervis Bay: Easter holiday

Jervis Bay

Three hours drive south from Sydney. A haven for holiday makers seeking peace, relaxation and nature. It's similar to how the Upper East Siders on Gossip Girl unwinds at the Hamptons. Love that show and love the fashion on that show.

Collingwood Beach at Jervis Bay. White sands and the sparkling southern ocean.

Down here, if you're truly super duper rich and famous, you would be unwinding at your holiday house at Palm Beach(where the beach houses are a few million a pop) or else if you're less rich and less famous but not a pauper(ahem) then you would unwind up or down the coast and anywhere but the city. 

Maybe Jervis Bay is for the rich but not famous? Considering that we saw a little, yellow Lamborghini parked at the beach. They only cost $350,000 to $450,000 ... I wouldn't mind having a Lamborghini beach buggy...

Yellow Lamborghini spotted, parked at Collingwood Beach, Jervis Bay

My friend booked a holiday house for us at 6 Bayswater Road, Vincentia NSW. It was only $760 for four nights and that was vastly less than what I had expected for Easter holiday bookings. Weather forecasts were disappointingly rain on and off however, I was so surprised and pleased with how the weather obeyed with our 'please be sunny, please be sunny' holidaying mantra.

Anyhow, back to normality, back on the laptop and back on this blog! Hope y'all had a happy and safe Easter holiday too! Unfortunately, I must confess, I was back to driving to work again in my non-fuel economising car :p One of my favourite songs by Youth Group was playing and it brought back happy, mellow and reminiscent memories of many happy times. An extract of the lyrics:

  

 "Youth is like diamonds in the sun, and diamonds are forever..."
Youth is transient. It's like the dew on the grass that evaporates with the dawn. The droplet of water that drips from the tap. The hint of rainbows on a cloudy day. 

Collingwood Beach, Jervis Bay at the rocky end of the beach during sunset

 It passes by so quickly that we have to always remember to enjoy ourselves whilst young and to be serious but not so serious. To think about tomorrow but also live for today. I brought two cameras with me on the trip. My friends all brought along several lens and tripods for their dslr and since everyone was shooting with their Canon, we shared the lens. 

Without further ado, I've uploaded some photos that I took. Although I'm a newbie in terms of photography and using the dslr and all its functions, I still enjoy it and am learning plenty every time I take the camera out for a spin. The weather was grey, lighting was grey, so it's been an effort to not have too many under and overexposed photos.

Friday:

Sea anemones at Collingwood Beach, Jervis Bay

Collingwood Beach, Jervis Bay, gloriously dusky sunset

Collingwood Beach, Jervis Bay, spectacular sunset as the evening turned dark

Saturday:

Lookout from Cape St George, where a lot of ships ran into the rocks below causing the road leading up to this cliff to be labelled as 'Wreck Bay Road'

Cape St George Lighthouse lookout from the other side, treacherously rocky and a tragic story of how the lighthouse was built at that point due to convenience and ease of building rather than practicality, resulting in death and hinderance rather than guilding ships to safety

After hiking several kilometres, we reach the privately secluded Steamers Beach. The hundreds of narrow, winding and steep steps carved into the mountain explains why it's secluded as we huffed and puffed our way down to paradise

Sunday:

After hiking about 12 kilometres of hilly and bushy terrain all Saturday without eating lunch (what a crazy idea to think we could hike that much in two hours!!) we just sunbaked and read on the beach on Sunday

Collingwood Beach, a cloudy and cool weather translated into a dark and moody photo, taken on tripod with a slow shutter speed... the sun has set and the clouds have rolled in...

Monday:

Booderee National Park Botanic Gardens, never seen this flower before

The Rainforest Walk in the Botanic Gardens

This photo should be rotated the other way but I don't know why blogger image upload has rotated it. Anyhow, I love how the leaves were silhouetted against the sky

The mushroom log where we spent over half an hour taking mushroom photos. O.M.G ;p Everything was micro and miniature, moss and mushrooms included on this decaying tree stump

Decaying leaves on the forest floor in the Botanic Gardens

Mushrooms growing on the tree, if only they weren't poisonous then we could have been enjoying stir fried mushrooms for dinner..

More mushrooms. I just love the variegated brown of the decaying leaves and the beautiful but most likely poisonous mushrooms

Uncommon looking blooms. Haven't seen these ones before but they're dainty looking

Evening at Cave Beach Lookout. The clouds were amazing. I can't remember if I was shooting through polarised filters or not but the sky was truly memorable

Cave Beach, walking down

Almost sunset at Cave Beach, shame that the sun was setting on the other side of the mountain instead of this side of the beach, still the sand looked amazing in the afternoon light everytime the waves receded back into the ocean

A carefree para surfer at Cave Beach, despite the chill setting in, he continued to surf his way back and forth much to my friends' dismay as their cameras, mounted on tripods were taking photos with 30 second exposures...

Sunset further up from Cave Beach, on our way back to the car. The natural light was freakin' amazing as it colesced into a swirl of silver, grey, orange and mauve colours.

 Tuesday:

Last day of our long weekend. Last photo at the beach, an orange beach daisy covered in sand, half unfurled and yet to bloom

Autumn. Love it. Love the colours. Maple trees with burnished and fiery red leaves. We stopped at Kangaroo Valley for lunch and a break from driving back to Sydney.

Autumn colours...how I love thee...

The locals at Kangaroo Valley planted all sorts of flowers and I didn't have enough time to take all the photos that I wanted but I love how the morning rain had left raindrops on the petals of this bloom and how the flower that had bloomed and now wilted, stood sadly on its right

Don't know what this flower is but it's an Australian Native flower, I love how the raindrops glisten on its bloom

Kangaroo Valley, on the steep and winding road, photo taken whilst we driving in the car. Moutainous with pretty views.

Good night now and hope you've enjoyed these photos and happy snaps. I certainly had a wonderful, fun and memorable trip with my friends and can't wait for more fun times to come. Between all of us though, we are guilty of taking probably a few hundred mushroom photos hahaha :) That's life...