Tweed River, Tweed Heads

[Kyle]We had another pre-dawn departure from Ballina in order to be sure to have enough time to get to the Tweed River at the beginning of the flood there. Ballina has a bit of a reputation for being scary. Our departure was with only small chop over the bar. The most unnerving part was having to hug the rocks of both the semi-submerged training wall and the breakwater on the way to sea as that is where there is deep water.

A pleasant sail north, nice views and a lot of (camera-shy) dolphins joined us

Once outside, we had a fast run up the coast with the spinnaker. With two hours or so to go before slack water, we switched to the jib. After another hour or so, we were being pushed smartly with all of the sails stowed neatly under their covers. We were now close enough to the entrance to be able to see the standing waves at the end of the ebb. We waited a bit until things died down enough to be manageable. It was just before slack water, but we had no trouble getting in. One two-meter wave tried to slew us, but I was able to keep us nice and straight with about fifteen degrees of rudder.

Once inside on the flat water of the river, instead of taking a right toward the town, like we had done the last time we were here (in 2019), we took a left toward the public moorings at Ukerebagh Island. There, we were able to enjoy a much better birdsong to jetski ratio than is available in the other branch of the river.

WebCam of Begonia Arriving at Tweed River

And once inside we find a peaceful spot to anchor

The next morning, we took the dinghy across the shallow passage to the mainland side of the Nature Reserve. There, we joined a very muddy track through flat marshland to the Minjungbal boardwalk trail, which took us to the museum of the same name. There, we learned about the reserve and the long history of the local indigenous population.

On the walk back, we met up with an Aboriginal man who was born on the island and has lived his whole life in the area. He built on his knowledge of his native flora with a university education in Botany. Now he has been contracted a long section of beachfront park to maintain for the local council. It seems like he's pretty happy with the arrangement. When the crowds get to be too much for him, he goes home to Ukerebagh to enjoy the peace and quiet. While we were talking, he pointed out five different varieties of mangrove trees that mostly looked the same to me and rattled off the special characteristics of each one.

Exploring the Minjungbal boardwalk trail, and relaxing aboard

Having walked every inch of the Reserve's trails, there wasn't much left for us to do at Ukerebagh other than work on the boat, listen to the birds, and wait for a good weather window to leave. Mostly, our problem with that was going to be long periods without enough wind to even hold the sails up.