I searched for a Caravan Park this Christmas on the Gold Coast, and the only one that had room for a small campervan was Fingal Heads, called Tweed Holiday Parks Fingal Heads. I discovered a beautiful location with pristine beaches, an island, and amazing sunsets and sunrises over the sea as well as great walking tracks and an excellent fish and chip shop next door, which does not exist at present…. The sand bar is exposed at low tide and completely covered by the ocean at mid to high tide. . Fingal Head is a village on the Tasman Sea coast in the far northeast of New South Wales, Australia, about 5 km south of the New South Wales and Queensland border. The village is often just called Fingal. The headland and the small off-shore Island (Cook Island) were first sighted by James Cook about 17:00 on 16 May 1770
The headland, Cook Island and the Danger Reefs, were made from a lava flow from the now extinct Tweed Volcano. The rock composition in the area is mainly basalt or andesite. There are walking tracks all over this area. About 500 metres offshore from the headland is Cook Island, a rocky uninhabited island first charted by James Cook in 1770. The interlocking basalt columns on the north-east side of Fingal Head were called the “Giants Causeway”, named after the famous Giants Causeway between Northern Ireland and Western Scotland. The Fingal Caves located on the south side of Fingal Head, were destroyed and used in the early 1900s for the Tweed Break water. Cook Island was made a marine reserve in 1998 and as such fishing is prohibited in the waters nearby.
A provisional light station was established on the head in 1872 and in 1878 a proper lighthouse, built as a sandstone construction in a round design, was inaugurated. The tower stands only seven metres high, but that suffices since the headland itself adds additional height. Thus the focal plane of the lightsource is situated 24 m above sea level. In 1920 the lightsource was changed from kerosene to acetylene and became automated. It was electrified in 1980. The light characteristic is a single flash every five seconds. Depending on the bearing, red light is shown in the east sector while the other sectors show white Whales can sometimes be spotted offshore between September and November or, less frequently from late May to July.
Fingal Head is a distinctive volcanic headland of rectangular basalt columns, formed as lava flowed toward the ocean 23 million years ago. The nature of the cooling lava formed the giant columns. Aboriginal people maintain strong cultural and community connections to the Fingal peninsula, known as Pooningbah, place of the echidna. Basalt columns at the tip of the headland formed when the Pooning (echidna) was chased into the ocean. https://museum.tweed.nsw.gov.au/explore/natural-heritage/explore-land-life-culture/fingal-head
Cook Island, just off Fingal, is the ceremonial ground of the Jungurra, the pelican. A Bundjalung story connects the island with Joongarrabah (Razorback), the highest point in nearby Tweed Heads. Wommin Lake, Wommin Lagoon and Sponsors Lagoon…. These, and adjacent areas, provide habitat for many plants and animals, including numerous species identified as threatened with extinction. https://museum.tweed.nsw.gov.au/explore/natural-heritage/explore-land-life-culture
Although much of the Fingal peninsula was cleared for sand mining during the 1960s and early 1970s, a number of areas were spared, including a significant area of the critically endangered littoral rainforest to the south of the headland and a number of endangered coastal wetlands. Since sand mining ceased in the 1970s, most of the areas previously cleared have been regenerated
The Project is a sand transport system that collects sand from the southern side of the Tweed River entrance at Letitia Spit, and pumps it under the river to outlets on the northern side. From there the sand is transported by waves and currents to nourish the southern Gold Coast beaches. The project periodically dredges sand that accumulates at the Tweed River entrance which is also transported to southern Gold Coast beaches. The system is designed to transport the natural quantities of sand that move northwards along the coast
Sunrise Today... 
You must be logged in to post a comment.