Forget Bali and Fiji.......

 

 

It's a long weekend in the school holidays. The weather is glorious. Clear blue skies and warm but not hot.

In normal times Terrigal would be very busy this weekend. But these are not normal times. Most interstate borders are closed and Australia's international borders are closed. So the hundreds of thousands of New South Wales citizens who usually fly to Bali, Fiji, Phuket or Hawaii for the school holidays are staying at home and the result is an absolute boom for NSW coastal towns such as Terrigal. 

I have never seen anything like the number of people on the beaches at Terrigal and Wamberal this weekend. The traffic in the town is awful and the cafes and shops are full to capacity- the main Terrigal beach looks like Rio. A vacant parking space is harder to find than rocking horse droppings. It is a visitor bonanza. The local traders will be lobbying the state and federal governments to keep the borders closed.

I went with one of my granddaughters to Wambersal Lagoon mid-morning so that she could go body boarding. Usually even at the height of summer there would be a dozen cars in the small car park there and a smattering of people-the sandbank in the photo would be empty. Today there were cars lining the road to the lagoon and the sandbank was packed with people. 

Photo taken with my iPhone. I would have preferred to have taken it with a camera but Leicas and beaches do not mix so it had to be the iPhone again. I have actually slightly dialled back the clarity on the photo in Lightroom as I thought it looked oversharp and harsh.