March 05 - After spending the week working in Brisbane I rented a little Mazda and headed South to the Gold Coast for the weekend. On Saturday morning the wind was already starting to blow, so I headed North, past the Nara Seaworld Resort, to the top of the Spit where a breakwall offers a bit of protection from the wave wrecking gales.

North of the Spit, seperated by a couple of hundred metres of tide affected waterway (read river washing out to sea), is South Stradbroke Island. As the sand island is not accessible by land and I didn't have a boat handy, I put my camera into a waterproof bag then jumped on my body board and swam across the channel.
Fifteen minutes later I was on South Stradbroke Island.

The beach above looks North along the unbroken sandy beach, famous both for quality waves and the odd shark attack. Keen to test out my new waterproof camera bag in the surf I pointedly ignored the 'Go Home Blow-ins' sign painted on the breakwall and jumped once more into the luke warm Pacific Ocean water.

The surf near the breakwall was smaller than the main waves breaking further North, but was also cleaner and less crowed, the perfect test ground to take my first in water photos. Most of the photos were either blurry (from the fast moving waves) or speckled with water spots (from when the fast moving waves hit me!). Next time I'll use a faster shutter speed and try coating the front glass with something to disperse the water drops... apparently apple works well...

The picture below is of the South Straddie break wall, complete with channel light. This breakwall has a twin on the Spit side, the two of which form a safe opening for boats entering the Surfers Paradise waterway from the ocean.