Sapphire Paddling

A paddler's guide with video presentations on the paddling venues of Australia's Coastal Wilderness for the recreational paddler of kayak or canoe presented by private, non commercial persons.

The National Australia Program identifies bioregions of national significance that offer distinctive Australian national and cultural experience. It is the distinctive landscape itself, and the experience offered by the environment, that defines each National Landscape. Australia’s Coastal Wilderness is but one of their nominated number - a National Landscape bioregion stretching over 300kms that is home to a World Biosphere Reserve and some of the world’s richest diversity of flora and fauna.

Located in the South Eastern Corner of Australia across the New South Wales and Victorian State Borders (Sapphire Coast and Wilderness Coast), Australia’s Coastal Wilderness represents one of Australia’s notable Wilderness Areas - a wilderness of coastal and escarpment forests bordered by rugged coastlines of vivid rock formations, beaches, lakes, lagoons, rivers and extensive areas of coastal heath.

For the paddling enthusiast, this coastal wilderness can represent a geographical assemblage ranging from the tranquil contented calmness of mirrored placid waters to the challenge of tumbling rapids or the churn of open sea.

The Recreational Paddler’s Guide to Australia’s Coastal Wilderness is presented in Portable Document Format (PDF) with a total of 55 recreational venues and other explanatory prose that may serve to interest or inform. Recreational paddles, with delineated route and put-in /take-out points, which are suggestions only and by no means a complete list. Venues chosen for their convenient access and, for the experienced recreational paddler, their half to full day duration in the interest of encouraging the leaving of only a paddle’s momentary disturbance mingling the gentle dissipating wake of the kayak. Paddler competency description levels are deliberately not given just as some aesthetic or venue preference rating is not.

‘Sapphire Paddling’ is a collaged video presentation of Australia’s Coastal Wilderness in the hope of visually informing the unaware recreational paddler of the potential for a diverse multiplicity of watery niches throughout the ‘Sapphire Coast’ and ‘Wilderness Coast’ regions. Chapters 1 to 9 are inclusive of the geomorphological or environmental features of these areas; while chapters 10 to 15 concern themselves with some of the more interesting aspects of coastal paddling. Where the objective of the paddle might be the better for the introspective experience of the journey and not that of destination – a journey to adjust, entrust and to be the more contentedly fulfilled while, at other times, testing and honing the necessary skills of the paddler’s tool box.