Keys, Coffee, and Pumping Sand.

If I had to ride a bicycle to Seacliff to hand over some car keys, at least I had a nice day to do so. The breeze was gentle, the sky was clear, and the sunshine was bright if lacking a bit in the warmth department.

I double and triple-checked that I had the car keys, and then rode a meandering path south through suburbia because I was a wee bit bored with riding along the beach front.  I followed the Stuart River, a rather depressing flashback to the days when progress entailed the domination of nature and the employment of copious quantities of concrete.

Wild river.

 

Arriving at Seacliff well before Roger, I entertained myself by riding to the very end of the beach and I'm so glad I did, for what did I find but this...

"Soft sand slurry present: enter at own risk."  AKA man-made quicksand: temptation for fools.

 

After 30+ years of marriage I know what thrills an engineer, so after we had conducted the all-important key transfer and had our almost-as-important cup of coffee, I took Roger back to see the sand fountain. A man in a high visibility vest sat in the sunshine, nursing a coffee and watching the sand. His job, he informed us, was to ensure all went well at this end of the sand pumping operation. On cold days he sat in his excavator all day but on days like today he sat in the sun and contemplated the pleasures of working on a job with multiple cafes within walking distance. There were, he informed me, 11 sand outlets between here and Glenelg, and every winter all the sand that had spent the summer migrating up to Glenelg was pumped back down to where it could do the most good.  This was apparently quite a complicated job given the ins and out of gathering sand, pumping sand, and dealing with the tide coming in and out and the general public of whom there was always one willing to test the concept of man-made quicksand.

The plan is to cover all the rocks with sand which will, over the course of the summer, take itself off to Glenelg again. 

 

With all that excitement over we parted ways: Roger off to the train/rail trail to McLarenvale and me back up along the beachfront past Glenelg where I got to see the other end of the sand operation.

My personal engineer missed out on all the fun.

You know it's cold when not even the native South Australians are swimming.

I was tempted.  What a shame I'd already had my morning coffee.

And home to the dog.

Not impressed.