The lake meets the sea

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Tarougra Lake

Usually Tarougra Lake (at the north end of Dalmeny Beach just below Jemisons headland) and the sea are separated by a thick wide sandbar, stretching unrocky in a hump that hides all but a sliver of ocean when you look east from lake level. After the wild weather, the landscape is very different – sand cliffs, exposed ridges of rock, tea-coloured streams splitting around the rocks and meeting incoming waves in an upheaval of amber and white. In the distance is Gulaga.

 

Looking towards the opening to the sea

 

Across the sand cliffs to Gulaga

 

Looking back into the lake

 

Through exposed rocks to the sea

 

Lake meets the sea

 

 

Looking across exposed rocks back to the lake

 

Across what's left of the sandbar to the sea

 

Looking across the opening to the sand cliffs and Gulaga

 

Across sea debris and back up to the lake

 

Looking towards Gulaga across the opening from the track back to the headland

 

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Spring flowering

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bush flowers

 

Spiny-head mat rush Lomandra longifolia

 

 

 

 

Lilac lily Schelhamerra undulata

 

 

 

Branching grass flag: Libertia paniculata (?)

 

 

 

 

Scarlet pimpernel: Anagallis arvensis (not a native)

 

 

Coastal wattle Acacia sophorae (?)

 

 

????

A small plant growing in the sand. My local ID book doesn't cover such plants, and a beauty in the library is reference only and out of print.

 

 

 

Furry nightshade Solanum densevestitum

 

 

Spear grass tree Xanthorrhea resinifera (?)

Can you spot the flower? In full bloom the flowers are thick all the way up the spike and a great treat for bees. This one's growing in the bush, not the Botanical Gardens.

 

 

Hibbertia

Two species: one a small bush; the other, with bigger flowers, a vine

 

 

 

 

 

Donkey orchid Diuris sulphurea (?)

 

 

 

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What the sea left behind

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after wild weather, sea wrack, Tarougra Lake

This morning I walked south, across the headland, to see whether Tarougra Lake (if that's its name – I've heard it called Brush and Brou as well) had opened in the wild weather. My sitting place beside the lake where I used to watch blue wrens in the days when I took my chair and recorder on my walks, was muddy, not grassed, and a lot of small trees were dead. I squelched my way along the lake's rim towards the ocean, ankle-deep in mud if I wasn't careful, through the artistry of the sea's leavings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once I'd finished squelching and arrived on firm sand, I found less maritime leavings: sticks, twigs, a long tree trunk.

 

 

 

Where the lake entered the sea, there was the solidity of rocky outcrops where once a vast sandbar stretched.

Before the wild weather.

 

 

 

 

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Wild seas legacy

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creek openings, Jemison's, wild seas

The wild seas of the last few days are now settling down and the skies are an absolute blue. But legacies remain. At the southern end of Jemisons the creek is open, and the amber water, the colour of strong tea, runs to meet the waves, creating delta and dendrite in the sand. At the top of sand-cliffs are signs of the sea's move inland – tangles of pumice, seaweed, driftwood. Plans to walk on the headland were shelved: my jump-reach wasn't enough to leap the channel and it was too cold to take off shoes and wade. I am left wondering why I didn't go out to see the sea when it was wild.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Eurobodalla beaches: Piccaninny Beach

Tags

high seas, Piccaninny Beach

I’m back on a beach with backstory, after visiting a few unfamiliar beaches. Pickos is the next beach north from Potato Point (Spud, of course): the names come from the familiarity of long proximity. It’s a small beach, with shade, a rare thing on Australian beaches, contained by the low rocky cliffs of Jabarrah Point and Blackfellows Point.

Many years ago when the children were young, there was a great flood. Foam filled the beaches and the wind tossed foam balls in the air, creating a surreal landscape, a landscape from another planet. The small circle of Pickos was full of this foam, and it filled the road alongside the beach, reaching over the bonnet of our car when we drove through it. It left a rim of grease on the car and also on the kids who insisted on walking through it. The sea below the cliffs at the southern end of Spud looked like whipped meringue, the stain of river water giving it that baked look. Explanations were various, usually involving oil from eucalypts inland decanted into the flooding river. There have been episodes of foam since then – in one a boy nearly drowned, going under to rescue his dog and becoming disoriented – but none on the scale of that first one.

One day I sat with a friend in the shade on Pickos as she made me a necklace I still love – sparkling purple glass. Last time I visited it there were the remnants of Hughie’s Hut, a stone edifice with driftwood roof my son built for shelter when he had no car and got sick of the to-and-fro of surf watch in rainy weather. Over the years it was expanded by other builders, with intricate passage ways. Now there is no trace of it.

Today the beach is empty except for a group of wallabies lounging on the grass, unperturbed by my presence. I see kangaroo footprints in the sand, seven of my paces between each one, and a sandpiper who obliges by letting me photograph, albeit from a distance.  I think his name is probably Marsh Sandpiper, but I’m open to correction. He aids ID by sporting a very long upturned bill, although he doesn’t let me see its colour, or the colour of his legs.

After the rain, streams of water are running down the rocks, their sound a gentle counterpoint to the thwump of the waves breaking, the unexpected gift nature usually hands me when I go out. The rocks on the northern end are honeycombed, and between sand and casuarinas there are piles of loose rounded rocks. I don’t visit the southern end because there’s a stream to leap.

As I’m leaving, a National Parks truck stops and two men get out with shovels. I hope their only plan is to re-embed the “No dogs” sign. Without reason, I fear for my little streams, which could well interfere with some master plan other than nature’s.

Pickos nestling between two wooded headlands

Pickos just below this road, once deep in foam

Looking north along Pickos

Sandpiper

Looking south along Pickos from the road

Down to Pickos after heavy rain

Tiny waterfalls

Shady verge of Pickos

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Bodalla: if you want to shop

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Artisans Nest, Different Choices, Gallery Bodalla, Hairwaves, Hippie Sticks, Lavendar Shop, Post Office, Songbee

Home territory is often, oddly, a foreign country. I’m not much of a shopper, and it took me months to realise that two new shops have opened in Bodalla, although I drive past them four or five times a week, and even park in front of them. When a breakfast at Blue Earth was cancelled at the last minute, I ambled in to see what they held, and when my friend was visiting made a thorough tour of the town, camera in hand.

Songbee sells things sourced from markets in Cambodia. The owner’s grandfather came to this part of the world in the early 20th century, and she’s run a number of business in the area over the last few years. In the current shop coconut shells have been transformed: they’ve become gleaming bowls painted with feathers or tropical flowers and long necklaces. Fabrics have become elephant purses; soft blocks; owl cushions. Mats are woven from recycled saris; bags manufactured from recycled paper.

Next door, Different Choices combines the old (old gramophone, squeezebox, posters for Elvis films), the handmade (pigs from gas cylinders) and knick-knacks, ornaments, bric-a-brac, bibelots, and curios.

Down the hill, Hippie Sticks vibrates with its tie-dyed rainbows: hats, shoes, jumpsuits, sarongs, you name it, all a swirl of purples, reds, greens, oranges, blues

Between Hippie Sticks and the Lavendar Shop, around the corner from the cat in front of the fire, is Hairwaves, a shop I visit semi-regularly, usually just before I head overseas. It’s where I luxuriate in a shampoo, never quite rough enough, catch up with local news, meet friends from the deep past and occasionally encounter a neighbour I didn’t know I had.

More subtle than Hippie Sticks is the Lavendar Shop, a haze of mauve and purple: soaps, bags, sachets, oils. The garden outside grows lavendar, and last year, flourishing purple hardenbergia, with its little green eyes, wound its way up the picket fence.

Next door is the Artisans Nest, an outlet for a variety of local artists: felters, fibre and mixed media artists, jewellery makers, users of reclaimed materials, experimenters with natural dyes, sculptors, makers of dolls, art cards and dream catchers, knitters, weavers, printers.

Behind the post office is Gallery Bodalla, which has for me a dangerous wall with a window in the centre. Paintings I’m tempted to buy always hang there, and yes, once I succumbed and bought two. The story of that purchase is revealed at http://morselsandscraps.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/frugality-and-impulse-in-mortal-combat/

The temptation is there again in the current exhibition – two reasonably priced landscapes of Broken Hill, once my heart’s home. The exhibitions are always of work by local artists, although not always on local themes, and are very diverse. I love the opportunity to duck in for a revisit during the month of the hanging.

And then of course there’s the Post Office itself. There you can buy the usual stamps, and also books for grandkids, spec wipes, postcards, photographic cards. All purchases come with the gift of friendliness.

That’s Bodalla, my nearest tiny town – population 527 in the 2011 census – rich in treasures far beyond my expectations when I embarked on an attempt to profile it.

If you’re interested in demographics, have a look at

http://localstats.qpzm.com.au/stats/nsw/south-coast/south-coast/bodalla

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Wild weather

Tags

high seas, Potato Point

For the last two days there have been high winds and pelting rain. The creek has opened again. Today waves are still pounding in and the wind is driving back their peaks in a fountain of spray, a guarantee of an exhilarating beach walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bodalla – if you want to eat

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Blue Earth, Bodalla Bakery, Bodalla pub, Dairy Shed, Malibu Mex

When we arrived in Bodalla nearly forty years ago, there was a pub and a small takeaway cafe. Now there are many choices when hunger strikes. Blue Earth Café has taken over as the place to meet friends – they rarely come to my home now, or I to theirs. There are gardens to sit in and umbrellas to sit under; chooks clucking lazily near the compost heap; a thriving and envy-inducing garden; friendly staff; an interesting menu; and a resident and cheeky magpie who’s eager to join the group and taste the meal.

Then there’s the Bakery, with an old fashioned inside room, a corner table with cushions and a view, and a deck for outside eating. Once a month there’s a Sunday high tea, showcasing the sought after cakes and revisiting a past era.

The Dairy Shed offers remnants of Bodalla’s dairying past. A raised deck has hammocks for the languid, and a view over a dam and rolling hills, and inside there’s a vast fire against the winter chill. You can bottle feed calves, if that’s your fancy, or hunt out cow images, or admire the eagle carved from a tree stump.

Malibu Mex is an interesting building, with even more interesting decor showcasing the surfing interests of its founder: benches and chairs made of surfboards, and white surfing bas-reliefs in the dining room.

The pub in the past has had live music at the weekend, and good counter meals. At the moment, it’s for sale and battened down.

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Bodalla churches

Tags

churches, Edmund Blacket, Horbury Hunt

Photos taken by Rosemary Barnard, old friend and companion in a prowl around Bodalla: the second one of the Catholic Church, framed by the big tree; and the close-up of the St Francis stained glass window.

 

 

View of Bodalla countryside from All Saints

Bodalla is a village on the highway, nine kilometres from Potato Point. It began European life as the dairy estate of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, a pioneer in large-scale cheese making and refrigeration. It’s bracketed by two churches: the shingle-walled Catholic church designed by Horbury Hunt; and All Saints, the Anglican Church designed by Edmund Blacket, and built from granite quarried a few kilometres down the highway. The organ in All Saints was made by Henry Willis and Sons of London, a preeminent British organ-builder. Both architects are famous in Australia, and it’s a bit of a treat to have two such churches in a very small town

Catholic Church

All Saints Anglican Church

Inside All Saints

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Everywhere you look

Tags

Narek Gallery, Wendy Fairclough

Narek exhibition: Wendy Fairclough

I think this is the most puzzling exhibition I've ever seen. As I walked in, I saw this in the corner of the old church exhibition space.

 

First thought: the gallery owner is halfway through a gallery mop. In fact, the mops are made with intricate craftsmanship from hand blown glass and cast aluminium and cost $8000. The question I need to answer is “Why bother?”

Perfect replica is not answer enough.

 

This is cast lead crystal, and sets you back $4800, ancient ironing board included.

And then there are the fibre glassed reinforced concrete bowls and cast lead crystal bottle ($8500)

 

 

Mystification continues as utilitarian objects appear transformed by a complex process into their cast lead crystal alter ego. I begin to see beauty in the colour and the transparency and the shaping, despite my incomprehension of the how and continuing incomprehension of the why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that I've assembled the images like this, I'm drawn to their beauty: the colour, the intricate texturing, the arrangement into still lifes, the anything-but-mundane tribute to the tools of everyday trades. I begin to see beyond mere replication.

 

http://www.narekgalleries.com/

http://sabbiagallery.com/artists/wendy-fairclough/

 

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