Diversity

Tags

a educated eye, Potato Point beach, rock patterns, sand patterns, seaweed, shells

Every walk along Potato Point Beach is different, no matter how often I do it. This day, the bush is still showing signs of recent heavy rain and the creek is open to the sea. Neat sandledges have formed and the water is amber-coloured. The sea has left ripples behind, in the sand and under the water.

My eye has been colonised by Paula’s 5-word challenge: I notice sharp hooks I wouldn’t have seen before in one piece of seaweed, which nurses grains of coarse sand. Other seaweed nestles in the tracks of the tide.

I add a word of my own to shape my seeing: simplicity. 

When I reach the rockface at the northern end of the beach, Paula’s challenge is activated again, this time my eye is attuned to branching, in the patterns on the rock-face, and in the shaping of sand.

Shells, pebbles and seaweed bubbles cluster, or lie defiantly alone.

Out at sea, a rare sight except during the Sydney-Hobart yacht race: a sailing boat moving slowly along the horizon line.

Then back to the creek and up through the village to that place I occasionally visit and call home.