Dinner Time for Chocolate Dogs

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Back when we started house sitting, our very first gig was learning how to be seeing-eye people for a blind chocolate labrador who lived in Port Adelaide. We enjoyed that so much that when he needed someone to stay with him again we answered the call and hence I'm spending five days in Port Adelaide, cheating on Big Fluffy with Chocolate.

Without daylight to provide cues to the passing of time, Chocolate has decided that dinnertime is whenever anyone comes home after going out. He obviously says goodbye, has a quick nap, and decides that the entire day has passed by the time he wakes up. It then becomes his life mission to harass his human until they feed him, which he does by barking loudly at intermittent intervals and, if that doesn't work, alternating between laying his head on their lap and making sad faces...

I am awake + you are here = dinnertime!

or, God forbid, trying to crawl into their lap and then getting very hurt when rejected.

The neediness of Chocolate aside, the weather was perfect so the very first thing I did in Port Adelaide was jump on my bike and go for a quick pedal around the familiar pathways and waterfront between Port Adelaide and Outer Harbour.

Port Adelaide was very quiet.

The Young Endeavour was in Port, no activity to be seen.

Despite the beautiful weather no one was around at Semaphore either, apart from the usual cluster of crabbers out at the end of the jetty. 
"Are you catching anything?" I asked.
They weren't, but they seemed to be having a good time with lots of socialising and minimal attention to the crab pots.


Sandhills at Semaphore.

The story couldn't have been more different further up the beach at Largs. A young man proudly showed me his bucket, filled with blue swimmer crabs and one large squid.
"My cousin caught these!" He exclaimed proudly. "The quota is 20 so he called me to take them home as my 20 and he's starting again at 0!" And off he wobbled with his heavy bucket.

I don't think that's how the quota system is meant to work, young man.

I saw a single blue swimmer indulging in high-risk swimming, given the close attention paid by Pacific gulls and the proximity of enthusiastic quota-flexible crabbers.




Foreshore views toward the Outer Harbour.

By the time I had looped my loop and was pedaling back through Port, the sun was setting.

Long shadows and ships.

Evening light in downtown Port Adelaide.

The old railway buildings,

and last light on the old industrial sheds.

I walked in the door to an enthusiastic welcome from Chocolate, convinced as he was that another day had passed and it was, yet again, dinner time. 

And for once, he was right.


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