Bateman's Bay, NSW Australia

 

Located on the Eurobodalla Coast, Batemans Bay is the largest town in the region and a popular beach destination, particularly for travellers from Canberra, the capital, owing to its proximity. The town lies within Walbunja Country, traditionally owned by the Walbunja people.

The bay’s name was given by explorer James Cook while on his first expedition in the late 18th century when he was charting and naming landmarks as he saw them. It is unclear what prompted this particular name and whether it commemorated anyone he knew. During colonisation, NSW was separated into 19 counties, of which Moruya was the official southernmost point. Settlers could not obtain land outside these boundaries, mostly because of the wilderness and unknown dangers. However, it didn’t take long before squatters crossed these boundaries to graze their large numbers of livestock. 

These days, Batemans Bay is home to the Sculpture for Clyde Festival, an annual exhibition of large-scale sculptures, from which the winning artworks are permanently installed on the Clyde River as part of the Sculpture Walk trail. The best way to explore it was to take a leisurely ride and stop at the ones that intrigued me the most. My favourite was Tides by Joel Adler because the sculpture was made from steel that was once part of the historic Batemans Bay Bridge. The artist used two main pieces of the bridge's structure as the base of the sculpture, keeping it mostly unchanged and maintaining some of its historical features.

Another clever design was Buoyansea by Jesse Graham, who used a buoy as the base of the artwork and attached tentacles to it, now resembling a 6ft (1.8m) tall upside-side octopus. 

I continued my leisurely ride until I reached Caseys Beach in Batehaven to dip in the beautifully clear waters and snorkel. As I explored the rocky reefs and swam among the seaweed beds, I was treated to a few species of fish, such as the red morwong with its large fleshy lips, the large-tailed bluish-grey luderick, and bream, which, if cooked, has a nice meaty, rich flavour without the strong fishy taste. I reveled at my encounters while I was hoping, although to no avail, also to encounter lobsters or gropers. 

Having built up a healthy appetite, I sourced a restaurant in the marina with gorgeous water views. I feasted on fresh seafood, starting with Sydney Rock Oysters from Narooma topped with wakame seaweed and a good squeeze of lime, followed by a fisherman’s basket with delicious crumbed calamari and prawn cutlets, beer-battered fish, hot, crispy chips (fries) and tartare sauce for dipping.

My next stop is Pebbly Beach to look for the water-loving kangaroos.