Returning to Australian weekends is easy, in winter sunshine before the wind picks up. We drive the new car out along the spur towards Tilba Cemetery, and suddenly the Pacific Ocean sprawls before us. A sandy track leads us down to a wide beach, backed by grassy dunes, and, towering behind farmland, under bright clouds, sacred Gulaga.
The beach is distinctive. The tideline is marked by lines of small shells in curves and points, depending on the whim of the retreating sea.
The sea is smooth, lazy waves plopping on the sand and splashing laconically.
I’m fascinated by horizontality. J is far ahead as I snap snap snap, his leg functioning well again, the rocks at the far end of the beach dragging him along by his geological curiosity. I’m not focused on geology, just on the feel of Australian sand and wind and sun. I’ve lost any knack I had of geological analytics in my seven weeks in Warsaw. I have to relearn diorite, and … what on earth were the other -ites?
There are no rocks till we approach the northern end and then sudden outcrops and bluffs appear.
I’m easily pleased by sand and rock gardens; rock patterns; and traces of attempted ownership.
We sit companionably for a while in the sun, sheltered by the rocks from the wind.
As we head back, a flock of tiny birds announce their presence by mazes of claw-prints, and then appear, scurry-pause-scurry, shadows and minute sand-spurts in tow.
We return to the car up a different track, through a gate and onto a bare grassy hillside capped by the cemetery
snippetsandsnaps 
Meg, what a fantastic post …. and those images!!!! Images of sand and more sand. Beautiful, truly beautiful.
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So close to home – and 80 more beaches in the shire. How are you? I often read you, just don’t usually comment.
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80 beaches????!!!!! Loads of sand … I’m doing okay, but not great … my feet are the biggest problem, but not much can be done … so I try to carry on as normal. It slows me down, but it hasn’t stopped me yet. *smile – Thank you for asking. *smile
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You and Sue are one pair of tough cookies, to quote my Slovenian neighbour.
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Thanks, Meg … we don’t have much of choice. I like to be called a tough cookie. *smile
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Stunning. Yes, horizontality – but also the curve of a line of waves rolling in beneath that absolute sea/sky divide.
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What a lovely place to spend eternity. Nice to see Ma Gulaga surrounded by blue and you have turnstones, one of my favourite sea birds. It’s good to be back on your beaches again Meg 🙂
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Turnstones are waders? Not these fellows from their claw-prints. And they’re quite tiny, nothing like the 18-20cm attributed to turnstones. Unless they were babies – but there were so many and all the same size. Although the look is right. Maybe a stint? And now it comes back. I’ve been through this ID process before!
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I don’t think they’re waders, just live near the coast, well that’s the only place I see them. But I don’t know many bird names anymore!
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We’ve finally decided it’s probably a black-fronted dotterel which “runs on twinkling legs”!
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Ahh yes that’s just right ❤
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Hi Meg I thought this should have been near where I posted about that Itinerary but maybe not. I need to find the posts about Cooberpedy etc.
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That takes me back to the winters I have spent on the south coast of NSW. That blue! No wonder they call it the Sapphire Coast. It’s so cold down here I’m almost tempted to jump in my car and go adventuring up your way.
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I’m delayering now the sun’s pouring into my living room. Almost tempted???
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Maybe one day…
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Meg, what evocative memories of our life in Fairhaven and trips every Saturday to the Tilba Markets and cups of real coffee in one of several cafes there. The Cheese Factory also had a splendid choice of fabulous jams as well as the Persian fetta. Al and I often did the walk through the cemetery to the splendid views you depict here.
Greek fetta and Greek yoghurt made from sheep’s milk is the best. There is a farm in Western Australia that makes sheep’s milk cheese and yogurt, but I have never tried it. What nostalgia it evokes. Nostalgia is recognised as a true medical condition in Greece when I lived there for three years. It is after all, a Greek word! Prue
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Oh, Meg, I can see you are back in home territory and relishing it! I do love to read your elegant, descriptive prose, to the point that I can almost imagine I’m there!
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A bit different from your usual haunts!
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Well, yes…but variety is the spice of life!
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I love the way you describe waves “splashing laconically”. One of the sounds they make here in calm weather as they reach the inside of the breakwater is a gentle “kerplunck, kerplunck”. So much the more must the sights and sounds be for you to enjoy around beautiful Potato Point. You have a lot to teach us urban dwellers in the way you take none of those sights and sounds for granted. Each has the potential to reveal something new, to be shared in pictures and prose.
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Strange. I never think of you as an urbanite, but I suppose you are. “Laconic” came to me in the middle of the night – and I remembered it in the morning!
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Yes, an urban dweller by circumstance but a country girl at heart. It is always a place where I feel comfortable and at home. My love for the country, the landscape and people, began when I was just 20, during fieldwork in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas for my Honours degree. Never did get around to marrying a farmer let alone one of the species who could be described as “laconic”.
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Now there’s a path not taken. Can you imagine yourself into that life? I’m not sure where my country-love came from. It must have pre-dated moving here. Temora? Even Eastwood, which was pretty “country” when we were growing up.
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Eastwood, that home of Granny Smith apples. A definite connection to country for you there.
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More riding the bike down to Brown’s Waterhole I reckon!
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The photos don’t load too well on my phone but from what I can see I know you’d be right at home on my Tavira beaches. And I loved reading the comments xx
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Maybe Tavira sometime! Although I’ve actually already been there!
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I always take you with me xx
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That water looks so inviting though I know it must be cold. If only our winters were so sunny! And another cemetery with a fantastic view!
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There was one gravestone that said something like “gone on the long walk”. A number of the stones have been put there to mark the vicinity of old lost family graves. Tips and graveyards always have the best views!
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Ah! Feet back on home territory, the wild open spaces. Grounding.
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It did feel like “feet back”. And then the movies yesterday, about an Aboriginal women’s choir from the Central Desert, followed by a long conversation with an old friend in English!!! Quintuple grounding. Although the supermarket has rearranged itself dramatically.
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Supermarkets do that, don’t they – as soon as your back’s turned. It’s an annoying phenomenon.
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Once when I was the mother of four and only went to town fortnightly, I created a master list by aisle – and first shopping day after they’d rearranged the whole store.
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Your gorgeous pictures make me want to be there. What glorious conrtrasts you’ve got between sand, sea and rocks – and sky. Glad you are enjoying it so much.
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It’s homecoming from seven weeks in Warsaw
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Meg, I’m sure you are happy to be back, although I know you also loved your time in Warsaw. Your beach is so lovely. I love the claw prints, “sand and rock gardens, rock patterns, and traces of attempted ownership.” I also love the curves of shells, as well as the close-ups of the colorful shells. The weather looks so enticing! Certainly better than the hot and humid we have here!
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We were lucky in the weekend. It’s been raining since and it was really cold – for here and for a traveller returning from northern summer – for my first week home.
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Sorry about the rain, but at least you had that gorgeous weekend. 🙂
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Thanks for the lovely tour, again, Meg. Glad you and dear old J are enjoying the times together in the lovely surroundings.
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What are you doing up this early? And enough of that “dear old J”!
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Sorry for rubbing it in. Fact is he is probably younger healthwise than his younger brother. Give him our love. You too.
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Beautiful! I was really with you, right there on the beach. We didn’t stay long enough in this area on our road trip last year. Hopefully we will return and explore much further.
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I’ve lived here more than 40 years, and there are still beaches in the shire I haven’t visited – including this one. I’m on a mission to visit the more than 80, a mission conceived in Warsaw and inspired by Jo and her weekly walks. How long were you here? And where’s home base?
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We live in Toowoomba and last year we passed through on our way to Bairnsdale. https://theeternaltraveller.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/taking-a-break/ We definitely need to return and stay for a much longer time.
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Lovely to see my neck of the woods through other eyes. Your photos of Tilba I like especially, but not only. My son used to work at the cheese factory there, and the whole coast from Nowra to Eden was part of my beat when I worked as a literacy consultant for the Department of Education, so it’s all very familiar. At weekends we’d go off the highway at various points looking for patches of rainforest, so even on the highway I had a sense of hinterland. My daughter lives near Stanthorpe, so I have a nodding acquaintance with your part of the world too.
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Oh, did you ever score any of that wonderful cheese? My favourite was the Persian feta – delicious. Your daughter will have felt the cold snap this week, down on the Granite Belt.
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We used to get an excess of “reached their use-by date” camembert and brie. No Persian feta!
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Oh, delicious. But the Persian feta was out of this world. So good!
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