Black Point Interlude

We hid anything remotely chewable from Junior, put on the collar to prevent Senior self-cannabilising while unsupervised, left the keys on the kitchen bench, and departed McLaren Vale.  We had a few days break before starting another sit at Port Julia on the east coast of the Yorke Peninsula.  In the interests of meeting with the new home owners before the sit started, we found a holiday house at Black Point where a mix of ramshackle old shacks and smart new holiday homes fringed the north-facing beach.  The 2021 census counted 64 people living permanently at Black Point, scattered among 222 dwellings.  And no commercial establishments, not even a pop-up coffee van to be seen, t'was truly going to be a hardship posting.

The sea on one side,

and wheatfields on the other.

 

The verandah of our holiday house looked north over the Gulf St Vincent.

On the first night the full moon painted silver reflections on the water and the night was silent apart from the slop of the high tide against the haphazard concrete wall at the bottom of the garden.

Moonrise.

 

I got up early in the morning and took a time-lapse of the world's most boring sunrise, balancing the camera on the verandah rail.

 

Most of the dwellings on the beach were shuttered and empty, the occasional one with evidence of occupation on this middle week of the school holidays.  A flock of children in bright pyjamas ran down onto the beach, jumped over seaweed, dipped their toes in the water, and ran shrieking back to their holiday house.  Footprints in the sand attested to earlier dog walkers. Smart new holiday homes stood back on the sand dunes, prudently removed from the sea.  Old shacks hunkered down closer to the water, creatively engineered from corrugated iron, fibro, and scavenged materiel.  Pooling water showed where the high tide had licked at their front doors and sucked persistently at their footings. 

 

Crime was obviously not a huge consideration in Black Point, given the plethora of kayaks, tinnies, and fishing boats that scattered along the foreshore or perched precariously on the verandahs of their shacks.  Some of them had been there so long that they sank comfortably into the sand, filled with a toddler's paddling pool worth of water.

Up at the point two pelicans snoozed on the sand, surround by a cohort of silver gulls.  Flocks of plovers sparkled across the sand. 

 

Low tide exposed muddy reefs and kayakers faffed around in shallow water, crabbing or fishing or just out to enjoy a sunny winter day. 

 

Of course all wasn't entirely perfect in the paradise of Black Point.  Apart from the severe lack of establishments where one could indulge in coffee and cake, there was the ever-present risk of sudden car appearances. 

 

More signs informed the public of defibrillators being available at regular intervals, which made one wonder what had prompted such solicitude for the cardiac health of strangers amongst the population of Black Point.  Other signs warned of the dangers of blue-ringed octopi, the risks of razor shells, and the danger of being caught on the beach at high tide.  More signs sternly admonished strangers to get to or from the beach only via designated accesses and most definitely not via shack frontage, which would put a beach walker in a moral dilemma should they get caught on the beach at high tide, wouldn't it?

I was a good girl and used the beach access, although I may or may not have had to get my feet wet dodging around the front of shacks as the tide came in.  By then it was getting both cold and dark, and Roger had taken the much more sensible option of risking apparating cars on the roadway home.

I'll leave you with a little singing honey eater breakfasting in a shack garden.  It's time to close the doors and pull the curtains.  It's cold and windy outside tonight.