it's all about me...

I celebrated my birthday on the 28th in fine style with lots of phone calls from family and friends. Steve gave me a beautiful blue Japanese teapot. Kate and Kim gave me a card for Mitre 10 (yay!!!!) and Sharon presented me with a gorgeous pearl drop necklace she had made for her jewellery company Love Ruby X.

Feeling much beloved, I dressed for our evening at Leonards Mill, a beautifully restored flour mill from the 1850s nestled in a bend in Second Valley, about 45 minutes away. Sharon's necklace figured prominently.

With daylight saving, it was still light when we arrived.

The dinner was truly scrumptious.  French champagne signalled the start of a sublime night. I had a delicious barramundi with succulent chips and Steve had a huge steak, something we never have at home. We opted for dessert (of course) and mine tasted heavenly: mango slices on dollops of blancmange on a bed of crushed macadamia nuts, with spoonfuls of lemon sorbet, all sprinkled generously with Kangaroo Island honey.

As I said, this was all about me. Only another 365 days (it's a leap year remember) until my next birthday.

Early morning magic

I woke up at an unaccustomed 5.30 the other morning and decided to head to the beach to catch the sunrise. Camera at the ready, I shot my first image. I have never done a sunrise before so was a bit nervous as to how to approach the task. I quite like this one showing the foreground of coastal scrub.

I love the 'stairway' effect in this next shot.

As I walked further along the coastal path, the light from the newly risen sun was striking the rocks and shoreline.

It was so peaceful and I only met a handful of people. The tide was well in and the sun was rising quite quickly now it was above the horizon. My last shot is at the end of my walk looking back over the bay. The new day had begun - and I am a bit more confident in taking sunrise shots.  

We investigate the Heysen Trail

For some post-festive exercise we decided to do a bit of the Heysen Trail - and when I say 'a bit' I most definitely mean it. The Trail itself extends 1200kms from Cape Jervis at the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula to Parachilna Gorge in the Flinders Ranges and is a 60-day adventure walk. For us, we did four kms (eight kms return) of the Trail in the Newland Head Conservation Park, a bushland park not far from our home.  Disappointingly, it was not the best of walks: it began well with a well-defined track.

Then, the track proceeded uphill in a gradual slope that never ended; we were walking up a steep ridge line. The terrain got sandier and became a bit of a slog, then rockier. On either side was unremarkable coastal vegetation. We eventually arrived at the end of the ridge and looked out on the Southern Ocean. The track then followed the coast. We spotted a few wildflowers and had glimpses of spectacular coastline with rocky headlands and surging surf.

The narrow track now wound in and around bushes and rocks and we decided we had had enough. The fresh sea breeze was welcome as we retraced our steps.

More coastal walking

Last Sunday we continued along the coastal path we had explored earlier, this time venturing another few kilometres further west. The path was easy underfoot but had one rather steep bit (well, for us, anyway). The views were superb - long stretches of rocky coastline backed by grass-topped cliffs, white sandy inlets, foamy surf gently surging over the granite rocks, wildflowers blooming alongside the path.

Last week, a catastrophe  occurred when I went to take a photo with my newish camera. It seems a piece of memory card snapped off in the camera, so a memory card will no longer fit in. We took it to Adelaide to get it fixed. The girl tried valiantly to remove the offending debris with a  dentist-like hook but to no avail. She said the whole camera had to be taken apart and it would cost $200. So... too hard basket at the moment. Steve's lent me his old Nikon which I am having to get used to.

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Coorong Cruising

My best beloved gave me an early birthday present -  a cruise on the Coorong, the protected coastal lagoon ecosystem that begins around Goolwa and continues for around 140 kilometres along the Southern Ocean. The cruise boat was comfortable and the guides described what we were seeing with enthusiasm and intelligence - no tourist spruiking here, thank goodness.

Our trip took us first past the Goolwa Barrage - a weir system that controls the flow of fresh water from the Murray River, and through a lock where we saw some sleepy seals.

Then we sailed through a narrow channel bordering a long sand-duned peninsula that separates the Coorong from Encounter Bay until we came to the mouth of the Murray River.  It seems that the sand dunes encroach at an alarming rate and change the actual position of the mouth every few years. Twenty years ago the mouth was almost 10 kms south. Dredges are continually at work keeping the river mouth open to the Southern Ocean. It is a very small opening for such a mighty river so it is no wonder that both Flinders and Baudin missed it on their 1802 travels and it was not until 1830 that it was discovered by Charles Sturt.

We cruised on, with the region's famous birdlife putting on a grand show. We saw sandpipers, banded stints, ducks, swans, avocets, plovers, pied oystercatchers and of course the ubiquitous pelicans (these have the largest wing span of all pelicans world-wide) bringing to mind images of 'Storm Boy', a fact noted by our guide who pointed out where parts of the movie were filmed.

Our first stop was at Barkers Knoll, where for some reason, mosquitos were out in force so we slathered ourselves with lotion and trudged up the sand dunes. This area is part of the vast Younghusband Peninsula and the guided walk through the dune vegetation to the ocean was fascinating; we learnt of the native plants and how they were used by the Ngarrindjeri people who were the original inhabitants of this land, and how the dunes hold so much fresh water it enables them to be revegetated. At the ocean we were shown how to catch cockles, a shell meat that the area is famous for. Prior to re-boarding the boat, our guide had cooked up a batch in white wine and herbs and people ate them on the beach: unfortunately I spat mine out; I do not like shell fish but thought I should give it a try as I have never tasted a cockle before.

On board, we enjoyed a lovely lunch until our next stop at Cattle Point, where we had marvellous views of the Coorong, trekked over the dunes to view huge middens whose shell remains shined silvery in the harsh midday light, then watched our guide dig for fresh water. After digging barely an arm's length, the water bubbled up and we all tasted a sample; the water was cool and delicious with nary a suggestion of salt or sand.



On our return trip we spotted some emus and an emu chick scrambling up a dune. Then we were served afternoon tea and cruised slowly back to Goolwa. A wonderful end to a very full day and a thoughtful birthday present.

Home sweet home

Our new home and neighbourhood is a far cry from our previous place in Portland. There we had 5 acres of orchard, lavender grove, paddocks, huge garden beds, a gazebo, sheds galore and no close neighbours...... and now we have a paved driveway, a pebble 'front garden',  a paved courtyard at the rear,  a handkerchief-sized lawn and neighbours on both sides of us in very close proximity. But how lovely it is not to see gum leaves scattered everywhere and have large swathes of peeling bark littering the driveway and lawn.  It is pure bliss to walk three steps to hang out the washing and two steps to pick my parsley. However, our new surrounds and those of the neighbouring street are indeed very, very neat.   Roses abound in all their glory and natives are pretty and well looked after - nothing straggly here. I will definitely have to lift my horticultural game. Here are three views of the neighbourhood.

 

There is a lovely lakeside development nearby that people kayak and swim in. Houses that front onto this lake have their own private pontoon. However, there is access to the lake for everyone with lots of landscaped grassed areas with seats at intervals around the lake.




Best of all is the Wetlands Walk, a minute from our front door. It's around 20 minutes a circuit so sometimes I turn around and do it again the other way.

Opposite our house is an old cemetery. It is fenced off with a lovely brushwood fence and native landscaping. It was once the site of the Tabernacle Church erected in 1846 by early settler the Rev Ridgeway Newland for his Congregational flock. Today half a dozen old tombstones remain; an elaborate wrought iron gate guards the entrance. It is lovely to look out of the bedroom window and see the trees, though they are home to marauding magpies and screeching cockatoos.

Discoveries

I have been reading an intriguing book called Ill-starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin by Anthony Brown. It tells the story of the two navigators and explorers as they charted the previously unknown southern coast of Australia between 1800 and 1803. It is an extremely detailed tale drawn from their daily journals, diaries of the sailors, and other contemporary accounts, linked together by the author's retelling of the voyages. What intrigued me was the similarity between the Englishman and the Frenchman: both were excellent navigators who put their scientific discoveries ahead of the current tensions between their countries; they died in their forties, forgotten men who were abandoned by their mentors and their governments as war between the nations became more important than discoveries on the other side of the world.

I loved following their routes, atlas close by, and identifying the landmarks the navigators named (many remain today the ones these men gave). Baudin's ships' names were assigned to Geographe Bay and Cape Naturaliste in Western Australia.  In territory close to our new home, I learned the origin of a number of names. The Fleurieu Peninsula was named by Baudin in honour of the man who gave him the instructions for his voyage: Charles-Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, who was at the time the Director-General of Ports and Arsenals. Kangaroo Island was named by Flinders  for the abundance of kangaroos found there (though the straightforward account in his journal  that the animals 'were tame and were shot in the head with small shot and in some cases knocked on the head with sticks') was particularly sad.

But the best part was finding out that Flinders actually sighted Baudin's ship on 9 April 1802 near the mouth of the Murray River at the end of a large bay, and after hauling up flags to signal who he was, went on board where they greeted each other,  talked about their discoveries and exchanged charts.  That evening, Flinders journal records that 'in consequence of our meeting here, I distinguish it by the name Encounter Bay'.