THE BEACH

As I scuffed my bare feet along the wet sand, the smell of the sea permeated every cell in my body. I was home once again. I loved the beach and the senses it stirred. The feeling of sand oozing between my toes, the saltiness of the air and water, the sounds and changing moods of the ocean and its weird and wonderful inhabitants, all excite me. As I picked up a smooth rounded stone and tossed it into the ocean I said to my companion, “this is the beach I still dream about, the beach of my childhood that I knew intimately. Let me tell you about this beach, Kioloa, as I knew it in the 1950’s.

Kioloa beach fronted a small and very primitive camping ground about twelve miles from the Princes Highway between Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay. The beach, about two miles long, stretched between Mill Point and Shelly Point with two very small rocky outcrops between. At the turn of the last century, Mill point had a wooden jetty, a saw mill and a few wooden huts which housed the families of the workers. Beautiful tall straight eucalypts inhabited the hinterland and were much sought after by the mill owners. However, when I knew Kioloa everything was gone except for the trees almost reaching down to the beach.

The beach, stretching between these two headlands, was a very safe beach for swimming as it was protected by a grassy island about three miles off shore. Because of the island, the waves were small and the water relatively shallow. On a sunny day the water was the colour of turquoise with diamonds bouncing on the surface and, as the waves raced gently towards the sand with bubbling playful froth, we could see small whiting skimming through the break of each wave. But, rain and storm clouds painted the sea a menacing steel grey and the waves roared ceaselessly as they threw themselves towards the shore and sand while beating out a warning not to come too close.

Just before the beach emerged from Mill Point, tiny shells washed up from rocky pools. Many a happy hour or two were spent sorting though these shells for tiny cowries, mother of pearls shells, shells with a hole drilled through to thread onto a necklace while the rock pools offered a variety of colourful seaweeds, small fish, blood-red anemones, slow moving starfish, limpets, sneaky octopus and scuttling red and black crabs. If I was not searching for treasure, swimming or fishing for poddy mullet, I would be building sand castles on the beach. The castles were decorated with shells, water tumbled stones and seaweed. I would gather the dark brown Banksia cones and pretend that they were dolls that lived in my castles. My dolls had hair of seaweed and necklaces of dandelion chains. Many a starfish and living shells were given new homes in the castles moat.

Wet sand is hard but easy to walk on or run along but above the high tide mark, the sand is soft and silky and full of exciting finds. Driftwood, old bottles, pieces of wood covered in barnacles, large shells, dead and decaying birds, plastic containers, floating marker buoys from lobster traps all provided wonderful treasures. I dimly remember the time a fishing boat fell foul in a storm and was washed up near Shelly Point. We raced up the beach to view the desolate boat lying on its side. The contents had been stripped bare so we assumed that the fishermen had survived the storm and experience and would be back to salvage the boat.

Sand dunes slumbered lazily behind the flat beach and were host to a myriad variety of plant and animal life. Dull green grass snaked its way along the soft sand and, if you were not careful, it could easily trip you. Gnarled old Banksias twisted from years of living so close to the sea, were full of noisy and dull coloured wattle birds which sang or fought amongst themselves as they sipped the nectar from the yellow blossoms. I would answer cheekily ‘Cackle-pin, cackle-pin’ but the wattle birds were not fooled by my call and just ignored me. Many a red bellied black snake slithered away from adventurous children, as we were too noisy and bothersome and interrupted their sun baking on the warm sand. Behind the sand dunes a tea tree stained creek was a wonderful swimming hole. Mostly the creek was closed by a sand bar but if a particularly high tide coincided with a storm, then the creek would be flushed of its half fresh, half salty water and be renewed with fresh sea water and young fish.

We always camped behind the first rocky outcrop and the creek which meant that we had to pass behind the second rocky outcrop on our fishing trips to Shelly Point. This particular outcrop always scared me as a child because just behind the sand dunes were two oblong graves which were marked out with concrete and filled with sand. There were no headstones to tell us about these men but we were told by some locals that they were seamen who had drowned and washed ashore. I always imagined these poor seamen looking out from the skull’s empty sockets while the bones jingled and jangled in a dance ready to pounce on me. I would always run, with my head down, quickly over the rocks in case their ghosts were around. As I grew older, I let the imaginary ghosts of the seamen rest in their sandy unmarked graves.

In all kinds of weather and seasons, Kioloa beach was an ever changing scene. From brilliant early morning sunrises to intense sunsets, the beach was a wonderful playground. The balmy nights, with the starry sky twinkling and the moon sending moonbeams to dance on the ocean and wet sand, set the mood for contemplation and wonder. I was my happiest on Kioloa beach as a child and young adult and my love of nature and of the natural environment stems from that wonderful beach”.