Following a Sydney tradition, we spent most of Christmas Day on the beach—trying out our new beach tent. We drove about an hour North to escape the tourists who crowd the famous beaches, like Bondi, Coogee or Manly, to enjoy the sand and water at Avalon Beach. 

The beach is about 50 km north of our home in Northmead in the Northern Beaches region. The beach is mostly a surfing beach, but it also has a 25-metre salt water rock pool at the south end whose bottom is overgrown with kelp--watch the video below.