Qualla: Jervis Bay

Jervis Bay: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Ballandras, CC BY 2.0. The sand at Hyams Beach is so white it makes you squint. Walk down to the water on a bright Jervis Bay morning and the beach throws the sunlight straight back at you, a fine pale quartz so clean it looks closer to snow than to anything you expect underfoot. The town's reputation rests on a famous boast, that this is the whitest sand on Earth, and for years the claim was attributed to the Guinness World Records. The truth is gentler and more human: there is no such Guinness category, and the legend seems to have grown from a hand-painted sign outside the local general store. The sand needs no certificate. Two hours south of Sydney and barely an hour from Canberra, this is one of the most beautiful corners of the New South Wales coast.

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Image: Thomas Ballandras | CC BY 2.0

Jervis Bay: Booderee, the Bay of Plenty

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. In 1995 a section of the national park here was handed back to its traditional owners; two years later, in 1997, they gave it a name from the Dhurga language: Booderee, often translated as bay of plenty, or plenty of fish. The park is now jointly managed by the Wreck Bay Aborigin...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Jervis Bay: The Power Plant That Never Was

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Electricity Commission of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia). Civil Investigations Branch, Public domain. Murrays Beach, near the mouth of the bay, is prized today for its isolation and its penguins. It came astonishingly close to a very different fate. In the late 1960s the Commonwealth selected this exact stretch of coast for Australia's first nuclear power station, and preliminary...

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Image: Electricity Commission of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia). Civil Investigations Branch | Public domain

Jervis Bay: Two Towns and a Tide of Summer

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Eggers, CC BY-SA 3.0. Huskisson is the bay's largest town, and for most of the year it drowses like the small fishing village it once was. Then summer arrives and short-term visitors swell it to roughly three times its winter size. Locals call it Husky. Its working wharf on Owen Street is the launchin...

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Image: John Eggers | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jervis Bay: Beyond the Beaches

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eezu Tan, CC BY-SA 4.0. The bay rewards anyone willing to look past the famous sand. North of Huskisson, the Beecroft Peninsula is an active military range that opens to the public when firing stops, and at its tip stand the near-vertical cliffs of Point Perpendicular, dropping sheer into the sea. Curra...

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Image: Eezu Tan | CC BY-SA 4.0