Wednesday 7 September 2022 Coila Lake

 Before we start here is a couple of pics of what passes for garden gnomes in this part of the world: Early morning nap, and

a wobbly young joey trying to master control of its long legs - going, going

and recovering from the gone.

Anyway, to the business at hand.  An early start was required this morning as the wind was forecast to rise in the afternoon and due to its topography Coila Lake is wind prone. Accordingly, we set off at 7.00am and headed up the coat to Tuross Head.

Launching onto largely glassy water at 8.40am and looking east the the closed mouth.

Being easily wind prone and because of its uninteresting shape, Coila has been low on the bucket list. So we had no great expectations for the day, other than being able to tick it off and lunch at the Pickled Octopus :) :)  

How wrong we were proved to be. As you will see from the video the bird life was abundant - swans, pelicans, cormorants, sea eagles and terns abounded and at times it was hard to know which way to look. Our progess was slowed so much we didn't have time to paddle the all the lake.

We pulled in to a long sandy beach at 10.15am for morning tea. Looking across the lake to the hills and

looking further up the lake.

As you will see from the video by the time we took to the water again at 10.50am the breeze had begun.

The ruffled water made it hard to see the small granite boulders scattered about on the bottom of the lake close to shore and all of us made contact with one or more - the ensuing horrible grinding noice causing each of us groan and shudder in turn.

Upon reaching the narrowest part of the lake we stopped for a confab. Due to our slow progress, the increasing breeze and anticipation of lunch it was agreed by all to paddle across the lake and head back to the put in point which we reached around noon. 

Here is the video

One third of the 180o view of the Tuross River/Lake from the deck of the Pickled Octopus.

Trip Notes:

Lake closed

Put In/Take Out: Kyla Park

10.5kms