The endless variety of patterns that sea and sky and sun can create mean one must always keep a sharp eye out for the ephemeral combination they may offer.
As each wave recedes, I am mesmerised by these fleeting puffs of sand, ringed with bubbles like smoke rings. What causes them?
Equally inexplicable to me are the convoluted circles of lace patterns in the waves’ foamy wash, seemingly unrelated to rocks.
Or these club-handed clouds, offering what, beseeching whom?
I love the patterning made by Horsetail Casuarinas, drooping gracefully in fine line silhouette. I also love the shade they offer…
While I love mirror-like reflections, I appreciate these artfully broken reflections as the tide ripples up this creek.
Pair the magic of light through leaves with still water and you have incomparable patterns.
I drink in all these chance pairings, and hope I never fully lose my sight, for to be deprived of all these beauties would be a loss indeed…
As the sun sets here, I am more attracted to the patterns and colours it adds to the river and the edging mangrove mudflats than to the sky itself. I have noticed that my eye keeps being drawn more to earth than sky, be it sunrise or sunset, beach or bush.
As usual, I find there’s a solitary bird poking about, to add interest to my photo.
I wasn’t sure what this one was until it turned sideways and showed off its S-bend neck ability: a White-faced Heron.
Of course there is always a stately solo Pelican, here cruising the wind-ruffled water amongst the oyster beds.
Taking my eyes off the gilded river, in the shallows by the mangroves I spy what looks like an Egret, snow-white and solitary, as expected. The now nearby Heron keeps its distance.
But I admit I am as taken by the sunset’s transforming impact on birdless mudflats, with the black nursery spikes of the mangroves punctuating the dimpled grey mud and accentuating the gold wash beyond, where oyster bed posts give both horizontal and vertical definition.
I’ve seen far more spectacular sunsets here, but every change in the light offers new interest to me, always worth closer inspection.
As my readers know, I am a sucker for a solitary seagull. Now I am unsure if it is the same seagull who accompanies me on my morning seaside walks, but I like to think it is. This one certainly admires the sunrise as much as I do, basking in the wonders that a few clouds can create at this serendipitous moment.
The sight is stupendous, even sans seagull, changing every second. The constantly renewed ruff of foam edging the mirror of the wet sand is such a neat visual touch that it is hard to consider it ‘normal’. As the sun rises higher, side-on, up close, the foam bubbles sparkle with iridescence, but I can’t capture their tiny rainbows with my camera.
The clouds shift and suddenly a sky monster on the move glares at me from its baleful eyes.
Not solitary, these terns are watching the unfolding sunrise too, with the reflected craggy vertical face of the headland laid out flat, neatly ruled, in front of them.
As always, the fascinating details of how the tide has receded are written in the sand. These sturdily defined chevrons on the edge of the sand rise are new to me.
So are these scallops; not appearing as ripples, but a series of separate pulses of patterns.
Not keen on scalloped designs? How about herringbone?
Is there any pattern not originating in nature?
Well, yes. I rarely see anyone else down here at this early hour, but a solitary walker with a stick leaves a distinct trail as he passes me. It would have puzzled me had I not seen it being made, and would no doubt have inspired an unlikely flight of fancy…
The hooded keeper of this treasure trove glowers warningly from his island, arms folded, tail curled beneath him.
I assure him I won’t touch anything, just look.
The tide is turning, so soon his garden will be safe once more from plunderers… and blunderers like me.
The scalloped sand ripples around smaller rock islands seem to show a tide that receded in circles, leaving a rococo mirror for the small patch of blue sky peeping though the clouds.
Other parts of the rock shelf mirrored the land world more dramatically, with plateau lakes, rushing waterfalls, steep cliffs and deep fjords.
The forests of cunjevoi nearest the sea edge were glowing bright green, not having been exposed to the sun for too long, and about to be submerged again.
I began to think of the clever adaptability of all the inhabitants, animal and vegetable, of this tidal shelf.
The shells can close up to prevent evaporation, but so do these Chelsea-bun-shaped creatures.
Every now and then one of them shoots a stream of water into the air before closing again. I managed to photograph these with their little red mouths still open right after such an ejection. The bubbles they created are still visible.
I could see those red mouths because there is little vivid colour in these pools, so this red starfish was a beacon.
In other pools there were many starfish, but far more secretively camouflaged, mainly blue or with duller reddish tips. They were well hidden amongst the showy seagarden plants or part buried in sand.
But this garden has as much sculpture as plants – rocks of gold and amber, decorated with filigree created by the Galeolaria seaworms, studded with the pearls of more mobile shells.
It even has more modern industrial-style sculpture sections, where vertical rules divided the rocks before freeform artistic elements were added.
I am yet again in awe of the design intrinsic in Nature, which we can only emulate. Perhaps, as we veer from fire to flood seasons, we might also emulate the adaptability of the inhabitants of rock shelves.
Sometimes my morning walks are lucky enough to strike a magical combination of sea, sunrise, and sky … and in this instance, a lone seagull.
The seagull flew away, but the rest of the cast soon moved into a different and more brooding scene.
Even where the clouds neared the land and broke into fluffy cotton wool balls, they gave a brief but spectacular show of reflections each time just after a wave receded, leaving a wet mirror surface on the sand. A single fisherman the only other witness…
But he walked to his fishing spot.
Unfortunately, my pleasure in Nature’s spectacle is always ruined by the man-made eyesore of 4WD tracks, not made by fishermen seeking a spot further up this long beach, but just joyriding, using/abusing the beach as a driving range for their big boys’ toys because they are allowed to. The Port Macquarie Hastings Shire seems especially weak in this respect.
Queens Lake is large, and to walk around its shores is an ever-changing feast for the eyes. On this day the return walk was late, and the setting sun threw an especially vivid display of fiery gold across the water.
A little further on, and a hazard reduction burn far off across the lake punctuated the oyster leases with its plume of dark smoke.
Then the smoke became a cloud of its own, joining the mackerel sky in the water.
So many swift and ephemeral visual treats; fit for a Queen indeed!
I love the patterns moving water makes, on the surface below and on itself, and in its reflections.
At this beach, usually my eye is taken by those made the receding tide. But today this little stream of fresh water is coming from the land above, and it is one of many, although not all so vividly coloured. Croissants topped with apricot jam, anyone?
Kattang Nature Reserve rises above this beach, and today joins it with water.
As it makes its way to the salt sea, its ripples remind me of the cooling ‘skin’ when you test your homemade toffee or jam for setting.
I can hear water trickling further along from my amber stream, and see that there is is a steady veil of droplets from the bank onto the rocks.
This becomes a most beautiful series of convoluted fans of pebbles and sand and rutile, like layers of drapery, some creamily sheer, some bejewelled.
In other places, where no pebbles can contribute to the richness, the sand simply swirls with fine black traceries, fanning out to be lost on the smooth wet beach.
I feel so lucky to have seen these further examples of the extraordinary complexity of design and colour in nature., especially as they may not be there when next I visit this beach.
I am looking down on the same rocks where my ‘Wild edge’ images were taken. But oh, what a difference in the sea at that edge today!
Gently lapping, not crashing; small frills of white instead of furious frothing breakers. Even a few surfers paddling.
I have walked to the Charles Hamey Lookout in Kattang Nature Reserve and it does offer a view beyond my sea edge, a view of this amazing coastal complex of waterways, right up to brooding North Brother Mountain and beyond.
It is the combination of mountain and sea that appeals to me here so strongly.
But any tourist postcard can show scenic views; I am more attracted by details, often ephemeral.
If I look the other way from here, today it is the sea itself that takes my eye.
Peacefully rippling all the way to the horizon; not a whale in sight, but endless permutations of colour.
In the shallower waters near the land edge it is crystal clear and green. I have never been to the Mediterranean, but now I wonder how it could better this.
Then it deepens to blue-green, secretive of the ocean world beneath, and then to blue watered silk moiré, growing paler as it recedes to the sky edge.
As I retrace my steps I have to admire this rugged coast and its changeable neighbour, today deceptively gentle in its blues and greens beneath the equally unpredictable sky.
But if I look further north, the sea has turned silver, sparkling in sunshine.
What a visual treat it is to be witness to such free shows on offer from Nature!
This wintry weather comes with warnings of dangerous surf conditions — not that I’m likely to be trying! But I did want to look at such a sea.
And it was impressive. An awesomely powerful and persistent pounding.
The waves seemed to be doing their best to demolish the coastal rocks, rising like leviathans and crashing down in a lather of white and stormy brown.
On the horizon a chorus line of clouds meekly kept its distance from all this fury.
Each rock formation offered different resistance, allowing waterfalls of varying shapes to be created by the smashed waves. There was always another coming…
The rocks always won, directing the white flows to follow their lead, with no more choice than bridal trains.
It is a testament to the hardness of these edging rocks that they are not worn down but also an explanation of how the channels in between have been created.
While I’ve been away, there has been a great deal of rain, and the swamp that this dirt road aims to bisect is reasserting itself.
Of course the swollen swamp needs to flow across the road, and has succeeded in closing that road while the water follows its natural course.
The road leads to the beach, so my feet are wet before I get there, but what a lovely set of early morning reflections!
The sun is already up when I reach the sandhills… and a 4WD has already despoiled the night’s tide marks on the sand.
This beach rarely has shells washed up, and it is only in a small stretch that today I see them scattered like tiny treasures for me to find.
Walking home, wading through the reasserted swamp, I see two trees are newly flowering since I was away. This small wattle (Acacia suaveolens) has blossoms of a pretty creamy white, not the yellow we are used to. It is one of the earliest flowering wattles.
Equally sparkling white are the flowers of this Broad-leaved Paperbark tree, Melaleuca quinquinervia, common on this stretch. Being a swamp dweller, it does not mind wet feet.
While I used to easily see dramatic sunrises on my Mountain, here I am more likely to catch the gentle pearly colours of early morning clouds, or the mist rising above the mangroves to blanket the mountain on its way to join those clouds.
Reflections in still water are an added bonus. I spot a solitary pelican sedately cruising over the glassy surface.
And then maybe it sees me, because it takes off with long deep flaps of those massive wings. And, always amazingly to me, that heavy body becomes airborne.
I apologise to it for disturbing the peace, and for perhaps causing its early rising.
Not being a fan of bright summer sunlight and blue skies, I go early to the beach near me. My mate Fred shares The Cloud Appreciation Society newsletter with me each month and I have to agree with them that clouds are far more interesting than cloudless skies!
If I am lucky the clouds part just enough for those angels up there to take a peek, shining a spotlight on the restless sea below.
At other times the clouds part in a less focused way, to light up a patch of sea and reflect in the wet sand. Light is always more interesting when paired with darkness or dullness.
But looking down and up close is just as interesting.
If I’m sitting long enough, the sand itself can reveal fascinating sights. Like this portrait of a hairy big-eyed creature… made by busy crabs…and birds?
The tiny crabs move fast when they detect any motion nearby, to disappear down their burrows. I wonder how they keep the sand out of those eyes on stalks?
