Shores

Port peace

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Today I dared my first beach walk, after a week flu-bound indoors, basically doing nought but coughing and sleeping.

The beach was pretty empty, although several fishermen were risking the rocks.

The rocks along the Port Macquarie coast are quite harsh and unfriendly in appearance. They are not foot- or hand- friendly either. Such a contrast with the gentle continuous swell that they edge.

There are many scattered ‘rocklets’  creating lacy patterns and sinuous swirls of their own.

There were very few remnant patterns from the tide, but I don’t know the moods of this beach yet.

As this cliff and this beach are close to many flats and houses, I wonder about the content of the drips on several rock faces, where the liquid is like caramel topping, not water.

I am pleased to see a healthy banksia with candles all a-glow, but mainly the beach itself claims my attention.

I sit on the edge of a sandbank and admire the tenacious grass runners. Not much evidence of crab activity, as I was used to at Dunbogan but then I am late here today.

It’s not a dog beach. There are just a few determined walkers, doing the length and back.

I feel so relaxed I could sleep on the sand.

Trying to understand why there is such a sense of peace here, I finally get it.

There are no vehicle tracks, no 4WD scourings, just the tidemarks…

Just Nature.

Port prelude

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Well, I am finally fully moved to my new home, albeit with too many things to fit into a much smaller place. The local op shops have received a great deal of the overflow.

I had not had time to check out my nearby walks, which will often be on the coast.

Of course I was first drawn to the closest thing to a mountain: Nobby Head. I read it is only 30 metres high, but it will have to do.

Being an early riser, I hurried up the hill to catch the sunrise, always a miracle.

It wasn’t even 7am, but clearly the dog owners here are earlier risers than I am. The small Nobbys Beach where I had imagined walking was criss-crossed with paw and people prints. There were people busily walking down to it, along it and up from it. Before work, I suppose.

Some had more than one dog.

So the dog beach won’t be my beach.

And I was made aware that Port Macquarie is a much more citified town, as very few folk responded to my ‘Morning’ or my smile.

I climbed up my ‘mountain’, despite a wet and slippery track, much eroded. There is no view from the top, and it does not feel like a mountain, even a miniature one.

I saw other indications of too many people and too little respect for history or nature. The monument at the top was covered in graffiti. It was meant to commemorate Henry Gardiner, who had died in 1874 trying to save a friend’s life in the sea just below here. Both perished. 

Where was the respect for them?

The vegetation still held natives like the lilli-pilli I could see, but under so much of the invasive asparagus fern that it was almost buried.

It was all rather sad. I’ll be leaving this beach to the dogs and their dutiful owners. The mandatory and multitudinous pairings struck me as quite odd; what would an alien think of this society?

But I have found somewhere else nearby to explore… and to introduce you to next post.

Farewell to Wayfarer

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At low tide, the rescued boat is unable to float, sitting askew on the mudflats.

It is early morning and the sky and its gentle colours and reflections take all the attention for the moment. But up close, this slanted and stranded boat offers its name as ‘Wayfarer’.  I wonder where it had journeyed as a wayfarer, and if it would again.

Its exposed underside tells me it had sat on the muddy bottom of the river for some time.

Its deck is as colourful as the sky, worthy of contributing to the reflections before the mudflats halt them.

Not that my solo heron minds the low tide; all the better for finding breakfast. 

I then learnt that Wayfarer is to be dragged ashore and broken up; she is not salvageable, having sat for about five years on the bottom. Her masts had already been taken down.

She will definitely no longer go a-wayfaring…

River residents

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My recent walk to the river boat ramp offered the surprise of a new resident: a resurrected boat, muddied and somewhat askew, plainly pulled up from a watery depth greater than it was built to inhabit.

From the mangrove edges the more usual resident ducks were heading out through the reflections and ripples, and creating their own silver trails.

As they passed the salvaged boat I thought how much better adapted they were to this   river, to water. It was crippled, useless to do aught but stay afloat: they belonged.

There were actually four of these handsome ducks; I loved the way their reflections paddled with them, double hooked.

I had expected the other inhabitants here to be solo, as was usual. My pelican was indeed the only one on the oyster stacks, but I later realised it had a companion– a shag?

Not sure why I always see solo creatures so often — mirroring me? — but here was my solo seagull, and yes, standing on one leg…

The sole watchful heron picked its delicate way through the exposed mangrove flats as it sought its tucker. And while I have seen more than one seagull or pelican elsewhere, I have not seen multiple herons.

I have taken many photos of Dooragan reflected in the river at all times of day, but to see it reflected in watery mud was new.

As I am moving from here soon, I am relishing all glimpses of the many moods of the river and the mountain…

Sandscapes

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A walk along a deserted beach where I will not swim is yet full of delights and surprises.

Here I imagine there was a full mermaid sand sculpture before the tide washed her torso and head away.

But fanciful figures aside, the tide had left many different patterns, like these mountains of the moon.

Unusually, today there were areas where fine shellgrit had been deposited, here highlighted and disrupted by a splayed kelp plant.

And how was this rippling, ruffling pattern produced?

Despite the grittier top layer, the tiny and tinier creatures who live below still made their presence obvious by the balls of sand of varying sizes.

Ephemeral patterns and pleasures for the early riser…

Double-ended drama

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I have never been able to choose between sunsets and sunrises as regards beauty and spectacle; they are so different, and each one of them is different from another.

Autumn is a great season for sunsets, as this rather fierce example shows when I look to the south-west, where the sky seems to be on fire.

But face north and that same sunset takes on more delicate hues.

Face straight ahead to Dooragan and gold lights the sky.

And burnishes the gently rippling river.

But on the same day the sun had made its entrance with great promise, if less dramatically.

It soon painted the sky and the sand with a glowing peach gold, while the land was struggling to share some of that light.

Such beauty at both ends of one day!

A free show, if we only look.

Wild weather

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With strong winds sending small branches raining down at home, I could hear the surf thundering in the distance and knew it would be a spectacle.

But I hadn’t expected the amount of sea foam that awaited me at the Tuckeroo end of Dunbogan Beach.

The creamy froth had coated the rocks and sand, transforming the usual colour and texture.

The beach itself had been transformed, the high seas cutting into the banks and forging a new rushing stream.

The stream rippled along with each wave, with the yellowish foam edging it like a fancy frill.

Flecks and lines of foam were stranded on the sand, some caught and banked by what the tide had left behind, some blown willy-nilly to roll and dance over the sand.

As soon as I entered the dense bush of Kattang to walk back to the Tuckeroo car park, the surf fell silent, and stillness replaced the wild winds.

But if the sea was all white and cream today, in this weather even the Camden Haven River sported whitecaps and waves.

Always worth venturing out in such weather to see what Nature is up to.

Big Hill sunrise

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The short Big Hill walk is the only one here, so I head past the beach to climb that and hopefully see out to the sunrise, of which I can see delicate flushes already.

It is still half dark on the walk, and the trees arching over the track make it even dimmer. I had needed a torch when I set out.

The sea winds have shaped the cliffside forest into slanting sideways for  survival.

But then I emerge on to a side of the Hill where the sunrise can be seen through the dark trees.

There is low cloud limiting the sun’s visible rise, but it makes a beautiful bright contrasting glow with the grey sea and the dark cliff.

Before this loop walk leaves the sea to head down through the rainforest, I marvel at the rugged nature of the shore here. Steep and forbidding.

I come out the other end of the loop at the bottom of the Big Hill into brighter daylight, to find a lone Pandanus tree (Pandanus tectorius) propped on its stick legs, its unripe ‘breadfruit’ looking somehow inappropriately tropical.

Paperbarks and pandanus…

Swans and supper-singing birds…

Celebration sunrise

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Hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds, colours and creeds gathered at Oxley Beach to watch the miracle of the sunrise on 26th January.  It was a silent solidarity, especially moving on this first post-referendum Invasion Day/Australia Day.

The Aboriginal flag hung limply as the rising sun mirrored the emblem on the flag. A very few quiet speeches from local Indigenous people had preceded the sun. Mention of the massacre of over 300 Birrpai people at local Blackman’s Point set a sombre tone for the reality of why we were here.

But mostly silence reigned, quite a feat given the crowd on the hill above included many children. The grass was wet, the wise had brought towels or rugs to sit on, the elderly had trouble getting down… and would surely do so getting up …but nobody was complaining or fidgeting. 

Sadness, yes, but communion with each other and Nature made it feel like peace and calm 

At the end, everyone was invited to walk to the sea edge, and I found that most moving of all, as it felt like a healing of the division that seemed all around us after October.

When the risen sun began to be covered by cloud, my fanciful mind saw it as an allegory for the hopes that had been extinguished by that result.  An opportunity lost.

But knowing the cloud would lift and the sun would shine out fully led to new hopes that our future and our past can be truthfully aligned and our First People come into their rightful place.

I contrast the rah-rah and ‘patriotic’ flag waving and noisy celebrations that will characterise this day for many Australians with how the same day, that of the invasion, was mourned this morning. 

Surely we can be mature enough to allow both their appropriate days. Who would hold a party in a cemetery?

Early beach morning

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At my favourite local beach, early mornings are best, especially in holiday times, before the hordes awake, feed the kids and bring the sun shades and brollies down to claim their sand spaces between the casuarinas and the gentle sea.

A cloudy start to the day will delay them even longer.

It is so gentle because it is protected by two rock breakwalls that separate it from the river mouth on one side and the surf beach on the other.

Beyond the breakwalls it is not gentle, and the whitecaps and breaking waves splash high and surge mightily.

The tide is receding, leaving some sand sculptures intact from the day  before. This one is unique in my experience, never having seen tools as sculpture subjects before: a hatchet, an electric drill and a mallet!

Another is more traditional, although not of the moulded sand castles I am used to. This one has a moated settlement of flat-topped roofs… adobe?

A small group of Crested Pigeons bustle down from the trees and grass edge to check out what’s left on the tideline. They are shy of any movement of mine, quickly wheeling and turning away.

This flock of resting seagulls is the opposite, completely ignoring me. They have chosen the ‘banks’ of a long channel no doubt made by kids, right where the tide has reached and stopped.

Some sleep, but most are busy preening and cleaning.

I am fascinated by the balancing acts: here three of the four gulls stand on one leg only. Why?

One leg must give enough stability, as it does not seem to restrict the movements required to perform the morning’s grooming.

Some of the contortions, while seemingly effortless, are amazing to one whose neck could never do this.

To remain so dapper must take a lot of such time. These gulls know early morning is best here too: no people, no dogs, no disturbance.

Low tide treasures

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On a marine rock platform, at the lowest of tides a whole other landscape is revealed, a rich and colourful world teeming with life.

While we usually only see the top sunbaked surface of rocks, here the next layer down is on show – the dense cities of Galeolaria, tube-building worms needing seawater, but safe enough within their hard walls to withstand some exposure.

The bright green forests of Cunjevoi prefer to be underwater, and sometimes you see them ejecting jets of water upwards in the changing tide. Their common name is Sea Squirts; their soft insides  were food for Indigenous folk, and then often used as bait by fishermen, but are now mostly protected.

Some of the sea gardens are tiny, packed into water-holding hollows in a rock, but so full of plants; here I can see ones that we used to call Sea Lettuce and Neptune’s necklace. A jewel box of life.

The plentiful small starfish here are mostly in shades of red and blue, but this particular aqua is not common.

Nor is this orange one that caught my eye; and here I can see at least four more starfish, but they are so well camouflaged or half-buried in sand that there may be more.

Across the shell-encrusted expanse of rock platform, I think I see a bird poking about. Is this my signature solitary bird for today?

Yes! Edging closer, I think it is a White-faced Heron, on its long elegant legs, looking for titbits in the temporarily exposed world as the sea washes in and out.

Much as I am, I guess, but visual, not edible.

Of froth and fury

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On a recent coastal walk, I met a wild sea with white whipped waves, a long damp beach with receded evidence of a very high tide, and a strand composed of murky froth.

The blobby yellowish-grey froth always puzzles me, as it looks quite disgustingly un-natural, polluted. It was especially revolting this day as it wobbled slightly in the wind.

But sea foam is actually a natural phenomenon — find out more here

What does not move are the rocks — extraordinarily varied in colour and composition, layered and exposed to different degrees.

Yet again, I wish I had a geologically-savvy friend with me to explain these  odd pairings of materials, worn down differently and left in strange sculptural poses.

Some are more consistently like a pebblecreter’s dream, millions of small pebbles held together for another eternity.

How long ago did time and wild storms send them tumbling from the cliffs above, to begin their weathering, their sculpting, from the fury of wind and rain?

Such thoughts certainly put our puny human lifespans in perspective…