It is ideal when a beach can have a pool at either end. The south pool (facing north) will have the sun for longer while any cliffs behind the north pool may provide some welcome shelter on sweltering days where even being beside the water is too hot. Extra exercise is provided by walking between the two, or even, if it’s possible, swimming from one to the other.
Curl Curl Beach doesn’t allow for this today, the sea is too rough. But it does have a pool at either end – North Curl Curl Beach pool and South Curl Curl Beach pool. We arrive at the north pool and find one of the best pools on the coast. Access is via a path on the way to the headland. The path is well cared for, and early in the morning fat drops of dew hang on the leaves. Our first sight of the pool from the top of the path doesn’t really make clear what we have found, it’s only as we drop back down to sea level that we see how perfectly wild this pool is.
Set on a platform out to the sea, the makers of this pool have fused it tightly with its environment. There is a large rock in the middle that the pool has been built around, blurring the boundary between the pool and the ocean. The sea is wild and the water is so high that each wave ends up as a huge waterfall over the entry point.
You must time your entry. You wait for the moment between the waves, when the water is neither drawing back nor rushing forward, where there’s a stretched and near-silent moment where you can jump onto the platform and run down the steps. Get the moment wrong you could be knocked off your feet or flung against the wall. Make no mistake at high tides here the sea could carry you off.
I can see how a high tide with big seas would completely claim this pool. Then as the tide recedes the pool emerges like a mini-Atlantis – once more fresh, new and sparkling. The sea itself could have given birth to this pool.
After that experience, it is hard for South Curl Curl to compete, but it’s a solid pool with good access and facilities. Young families play under the sun and older generations lap, walk and talk. I do some laps then drink a coffee taking it all in.
I love a moment as we had at North Curl Curl. Where a new discovery is so beautiful you seek ways to bring it ever closer. You swim in it, you photograph it, you talk and write about it. You are forever trying to be back in that moment. But maybe it’s less about you taking something away from the experience and more about leaving something there. North Curl Curl, you have my heart.
