Sunset at Cylinder Beach

I always head to Cylinder Beach for the sunset. This time I left before the full sunset arrived, and watched the colors light up the sky from the apartment I was staying at with a heap of irritation. The next evening I could not even find Cylinder beach in the dark, and gave up and took the photos from the Main Road as I wound my way back in almost darkness.

The best place for the Sunset is the rocky point between Cylinder Beach and Frenchmans Beach…where tourist collect waving their glasses of beer or white wine as they wait for the sunset watching the last of the surfers below catching the last wave.

I arrived at 5.30 and had to wait until 6.45 for the sunset. I sat on the rocks and talked with three German tourists as we waited for the sunset to begin. There were plenty of mosquitoes around and my legs were well bitten as I had not thought of insect spray.

Below us is Cylinder Beach, the most popular surf beach on the Island for Surfers and they collect there with their surfboards to ride the huge wave to the shore. Then taking their boards, they walk back over the rocks if it’s high tide, along the sand if it’s low tide, to get the wave and ride it back.

Cylinder Beach is also a favourite with surfers when the conditions are right. Lifeguards and lifesavers patrol this beach. The lower waves and fine sand maintain a usually wide, low gradient beach fronted by a continuous bar, with the mobile sand waves and bars extending up to 200m off the beach

In 1803 Matthew Flinders was on his way to Sydney to organise a rescue of shipwrecked passengers from the Porpoise. Flinders and his small crew stopped in the Cylinder Beach/Home Beach area and some Nunukul people helped the sailors to find fresh water. This was the first recorded European/Aboriginal contact on the Island and is commemorated in the Hope Plaque on the edge of the Cylinder Beach carpark.