Hot, dry day. I got moving around 1pm with the idea of going for a swim at Wattamolla then spending the night at the North Era campground. Got lost a bit west of Cronulla; the road doesn't go straight to Hume Highway as I misremembered. Had lunch (a ham sandwich made at home) next to the memorial park in Sutherland, west of the train station, then some neenish tarts from the Suntop bakery and a coffee from the White Horse coffee house roughly opposite. I got to Wattamolla around 3.30pm.
A view from a hammock.
After that I rode over to Garie Beach and dumped the bike for the night at the carpark there. The walk to North Era is easy, along the (closed) coastal rocky track. I got there around 7pm to find the campground packed with two distinct groups of young people, and it took me a while and some light bush bashing to find some suitable trees on the southern hill (almost at the top) and set up. Sweaty as hell. Loads of cicadas. There were a lot of broken limbs from last week's storms. The beach was flat and definitely swimmable. A wallaby was grazing near the midden. The dinner I had frozen (chicken curry and rice) was still frozen. I set the fly up and crashed around 8.40pm. There is some 4G at Garie and nothing much at Era.
A little surprisingly I slept poorly: I didn't bother with insulation and so got a bit cold when the wind blew, but not too badly; strangely my hip and shoulders got sore when on my side, which meant I had to keep turning onto my back all night. The dawn chorus (mostly cicadas) woke me to a beautiful morning around 5:30am. After breakfast and packing I got moving at 6:25am, arriving at Garie at 7am after an easy walk. I returned to Sutherland via Waterfall for a coffee at Salt and Pepper, and to wait out the peak hour.