Entries about diamond beach

About 3.5hrs north of Sydney is a small coastal town called Diamond Beach, and as the name suggests it has the most magnificent beach.


Dianne and Chris are fortunate to live only a few minutes from the beach in a lovely house with room for two dogs and two horses!
Lily - a Boxer


and Tasha - a Doberman

Spirit, an Arabian

Kaliff, also an Arabian

Dianne is very knowledgeable about correct saddle fitting, and as a result has found a unique saddle design that was like something space age! The concept is It can be fully adjusted and moulded to fit the horse.

Chris has built a lovely fire place to cosy round in the evenings


The house and location are so special that they rent it out for other people to enjoy
and move into their caravan

It was a great place for a run

Every morning before 6.30am, we'd be up to take the dogs a long the beach as the sun rose.


Needless to say the dogs loved it, and the views were spectacular!

The beach is a very sociable place were local residents met to take the dog for a walk, go for a swim, check out the surf and general have a natter!

However, the best way to keep Lily and Tasha from having too much fun and running off into the sunrise with the other dogs, was to walk that little bit further around to the next cove, where they could be let off the lead to play and run around


Some days the sea weed seemed to appear from nowhere and take over the beach


Tasha loved nothing more than wading into the rock pools hunting for fish

whereas Lily was always a little bit calmer and actually stood still at times!

It was always interesting to see what sights we might find along the walk. One day there was a structure that appeared overnight

Most days we saw dolphins,

though with the waves so big they'd often be a little further out from the beach

There were usually signs of the ghost crabs digging holes into the sand

and occasionally the washed up empty eggs of the Port Jackson Shark

a couple of times we saw horses being exercised along the beach

One day we found a snake skin hiding in the brush

But mostly, it was about the dogs having fun

there were surfers, of course

and watching some beautiful sunrises (here follows rather a lot of photos of them!)

There was the amazing Mangrove Tree, with roots extending up to 10m away from the tree and pointing skywayrds


The remnant rainforests of the Manning Valley make a significant contribution to the biodiversity of the region. Littoral rainforests once formed an almost continuous strip along our coast at the rear of the dunes. Sandmingin and urban development have reduced this significant vegetation type to a number of small and vulnerable pockets. the rainforest at Redland and Hallidays Ppoint to the south, are important exmaples of littoral rainforest growing on coastal headlands.

But it wasn't all play. We put in a new fence to mark the parking area

and re-built the chicken run gate, and built an internal fox proof enclosure

I'm going to miss this very special place...

and these two very special people

and their very special dogs!

The problem with travelling, is you only have so much capacity. If you buy anything, or find anything, you have to carry it with you! Or in my case, send it home. But that's not always possible.
Whilst staying at Diamond Beach, I spent hours shell hunting.

The beach was covered in them! More than I have ever seen before, and some amazing designs and colours.

I would love to have taken them all home, and in days gone by, added them to my fish tank. But instead, with Chris's knowledge, I have put together some information on the ones that appealed to me the most. I have added some online images of the snails that would have once lived in the shells.

Amoria Unulata

This species migrates in the spring from deep water to shallow water sandbanks to breed (Smith, Black & Shepherd 1989).

It lays egg masses in the shape of a hollow cylinder, 16 to 20 mm in diameter, attached to the substrate. Eggs are contained in capsules in the egg mass, and embryos can be seen through the walls. The embryos hatch as well developed, crawling juveniles.

Baler Shell (the large one pictured)

The shells of this large marine mollusc were highly valued by Aboriginal people, who used them to store water. The name came about because early Europeans recorded Aboriginal people bailing out their canoes with these huge shells.

Black Rock Crab

The Rock Crab is a common Sydney species found under rocks around the low-tide mark.

Bristle Worm

In free-living polychaetes, the bristles, combined with snake-like body waves, help the worm to move along. Other sedentary worms have a leathery tube, sometimes decorated with pieces of broken shell, or sand and mud particles.

Cart Rut Shell

When it was first discovered, this species was named the Cart-rut Shell because the grooves resembled the narrow, deep wheel ruts of the horse-and-carriage vehicles of the day.

Cone Shell

Cone snails use a hypodermic-like modified radula tooth and a venom gland to attack and paralyze their prey before engulfing it. The tooth is sometimes likened to a dart or a harpoon. It is barbed and can be extended some distance out from the mouth of the snail, at the end of the proboscis. All Conus snails are venomous and capable of "stinging" humans.

Cowrie Shell

The shells of cowries (especially Monetaria moneta) were used for centuries as a currency in Africa. Huge amounts of Maldivian cowries were introduced into Africa by western nations during the period of slave trade.

A print from 1845 shows cowry shells being used as money by an Arab trader. The Ghanaian unit of currency known as the Ghanaian cedi was named after cowry shells. Starting over three thousand years ago, cowry shells, or copies of the shells, were used as Chinese currency. They were also used as means of exchange in India.

Turban Shell

The name "Turbo cornutus" literally means "horned turban," and it is characterized by a hard, ventricose, spiny, imperforate shell.

What fascinated me is the hundreds of 'trap doors' you find on the beach - the door to the snail shell, which is closes tightly shut when threatened.

Green Turban Shell

Mulberry Whelk

The Mulberry Whelk, or Black Oyster Borer preys constantly on other molluscs and barnacles. It is able to use a sulphuric acid from its salivary glands to dissolve and bore its way through the prey's limy shell leaving a neat hole in their shell, and use its rasping tongue which is called a radula to cut up the animal and suck out the pieces. to use a sulphuric acid from its salivary glands to dissolve and bore its way through the prey's limy shell. Like the hole in the green turban shell below

Chris measured one medium-sized Mulberry Whelk's radula at 8 cm long.

Zebra Topped Shell

This Zebra Top Shell ranges from Townsville in Queensland around southern shores to Geraldton in Western Australia. It is very common in south-eastern Australia. It is unusual how the Zebra Striped Top Shell gains its striped shell pattern. At certain times of the year the algae it eats contains a substance that the mollusc excretes into its shell to form a darkened band. It is not known if the number of bands indicate the age of the Top Shell. What is interesting is that the bands occur in all variations of thickness from very thin to very wide.

Lobster Pot Rock

Left over and washed up from weighing down lobster pots out at sea.

Seaweedy beach

One day, the beach would be covered in sea-weed that had appeared over night. The next day, it could all be gone again, leaving a clean pebbly beach!

Love for the shells and the people at Diamond Beach