Life in Australia: ANZAC Day and Caves Beach

Last Saturday the 25th was ANZAC day celebrating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. It is a day of remembrance for those soldiers who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during WW1. It's now also celebrated as an overall salute to all veterans and those currently serving in active duty. Similar to our Veterans Day. I went to a sunrise service at Knobby's Beach in town with Tegan and Kez to show respect for the Anzac's. It was an early start to the day but really glad I was able to attend and experience such an important day in this country. Most of the service was conducted while it was still dark, but as the sun came up it started to wrap up. The ocean was churning and the waves were massive and very loud the entire time. At the end they shot off 4 cannons and I about jumped out of my skin everytime since I was so close to it. Afterwards we went out for brekkie, I went to work for the afternoon, then went out that night with friends for some Anzac beers. Great day all in all!

Sunday took a trip about 30 min south to Caves Beach. Before going to the beach we stopped in town at a fresh seafood stand and had a great meal of fish and chips. It was a great lunch to soak up the beers from the previous night celebrating Anzac day. Have been wanting to go for the past month so excited to finally get down there. Only have to time the tides right so you can get to the caves from the beach explore for a bit and then be out before the tide comes back in. Kez and I have been doing random training sessions for Kokoda that incorporate some sort of hiking with our packs on in hopes that they become second nature to us. So the idea was to hike around the caves with our packs but didn't end up that way. You enter through this large cave opening that gradually gets smaller and smaller until you have to crawl through this small section to get onto the other side of the beach. So we left our packs at the entrance. We spent a couple hours I would guess going in and out of different caverns and walking out onto all the rocks in the sea to sit and watch the ocean swell. Crawled back through the way we came, put our packs on and walked about a mile down the beach in the opposite direction going up and down the sand dunes to get some hills in. I'm sure Kez and I looked pretty out of place lugging around loaded packs while going down the beach. After awhile we again dropped the packs, sat down on the dunes, and this time watched a pod of dolphins play in the surf out in front of us. We just talked, I dozed in and out of a nap, and enjoyed the sun and solitude before walking back to the car. There were about 150 stairs up to the car so while Tegs waited at the top for us, Kez and I did 5 trips up and down the stairs since Kokoda is either downhill or up hill.