Monday was our last full day of adventuring on Christmas Island. Jo picked us up at 10am and took us on the long journey to Dolly Beach, the beach we didn’t reach the other day. 

This is the one that we had decided had too steep a hill for our RAV4 to get down and which others had decided (except for one guy) it would have been possible. But when Jo saw the state of the track, she had to agree that our car would never have made it (even if it hadn’t broken down the next day).

It took about half an hour to get to the start of the Dolly Beach boardwalk. When we reached it, we realized we had probably only been about 50m from it the other day. In hindsight, that was a good thing as we then would have been committed to walking the track, which took about 30 minutes to walk to reach the beach. I’m glad we didn’t find it then.

The track was half boardwalk, half bush bashing. We dodged at least three large orb weaver webs and our progress was tracked by many crabs before finally reaching Dolly Beach. The view from the top is of a picturesque white sand beach, clear blue water, and coconut palms. 

On closer inspection, however, you do see that a lot of rubbish has washed up on the shore. Not as much as Greta Beach but enough to be noticeable. This time we’d brought down a couple of garbage bags to collect some debris.

It’s a hard beach to go swimming in as it’s quite rocky and the sea is quite rough. However, there’s a little pool that’s fed by a channel between two rocks that is nice to sit and swim in without a huge risk of getting sucked out to sea (though at times it felt like that was going to happen).

After a swim, we had a prepared picnic then collected rubbish. Most of it was straws, thongs/flip-flops, and bottle tops but there was also just a lot of junk including plastic toy figurines. We collected a lot but it was just a drop in the ocean unfortunately.

Dolly Beach is a turtle-nesting site but we didn’t see any turtles. We did see lots of hermit crabs, a few red crabs going down for a dip, and robber crabs. A star-picket spike has been setup beside a rock so Catherine took aim with some coconuts to have a treat for ourselves and to entice the robber crabs down.

She made an excellent start of it and then I used brute strength to rip the rest open. We got through the stuff on the outside to reach the small coconut in the middle, then cracked that open and had a drink and ate the flesh. I then went to work on a second which was a bit younger and the flesh a bit sweeter. Glen had fun extracting it from the nut and washing the coconut in the sea. I did a third but it wasn’t as nice.

After we’d had our fill, we then threw it to the approaching robber crabs and watched with delight as one of them slowly shred the flesh and ate it. A hermit crab had some too. And another robber crab slid back into the jungle after receiving a prize piece of coconut. Fun! And so butch. Who knew I could open a coconut?

We went for another quick dip then packed up and walked the thirty minutes back to the car. Glen had picked up a tick on the walk down which was painful and worrying. I tried burning it with the heated tines of a fork but it didn’t come loose. In the end Narelle’s tweezers did the job. Glen took a magnified photo of the tick and the head was still attached so there’s no need for surgery. 

Jo drove us back to the accommodation, which took about an hour and was bumpy. It was a great day out, but I think of the beaches we’ve been to Greta and Dolly are my least favourite for the amount of effort involved in getting there. I’m glad I’ve seen them though. 

We had a very nice dinner out on the balcony with a lot of booze to celebrate our last night on Christmas Island.