Pats Park Macleay

Pats Park, at the bottom of Macleay Island, is a beautiful picnic area and Swimming enclosure, and its also a great coastal walk over rocks and stones rich with shells and debris from the sea. You can walk as far as you like at low tide. At high tide, the waterline encroaches onto private properties. Low tide also has oyster catchers getting the early oyster from the rocks. This area is mainly barnacles and limpets washed by the waves to shore and many different coloured rocks, and some ochre rocks in browns, golds and reds and the odd mangrove clinging desperately to what is left of the shore.

The swimming enclosure is coarse reddish sand, and to the left of the enclosure, the rocks are solid and black and home to many mangroves, rock oysters and debris left from the tides. Here is a rocky area where cars can drive to leave and take away small craft, and it is also a good fishing area.

This park was the site of one of the island’s two main oyster camps. While the first oystermen and lime burners set up camp anywhere, by the late 1880s they were encouraged to camp in various reserves that were set up around the bay.