I find myself contemplating the world in both micro and macro on a stretch of beach I'd like to call lonely and wild, like I used to, but a steady stream of hikers walk from east to west here late afternoon, marking the stretch of sand with poles and bare feet whilst dangling boots from packs. Not too many you'd call a crowd, but more people than I remember being on this beach, even in the halycon days of youth where we'd all pack into the small carpark and grassy paddocks to free camp, drink beer and walk whilst the boys surfed the huge waves in the cold and wild waters of 'down south', as we'd call it. More south west, but hey.
Jim throws in a line hoping for Australian salmon or gummy shark, but it might be still too cold for that. I oddly think of salmon in football beanies and scarves, but my mind does do weird things. I watch the gulls land the tiny sand mites squirm around in the soil. As usual, there's life if you look hard enough. In the late sunlight long legged insects fuck amongst the cooler shade of the rocks. I think of the importance of insects, though we'd spend long summer afternoons slapping biting march flies between sunblock smeared hands, spraying ourselves unwittingly with aeroguard.
Last week I read an article on the decline of bird life, particularly in America and Europe as Australia just hasn't done the monitoring. 29 percent fewer birds in North America than in 1970. In Germany, 77 per cent of that country's insects have disappeared since 1989. And on the pier in Lorne Point last week, an old Greek guy waved his hands in the air as he lamented the lack of fish - because 25 years ago, the fishing 'was good here', he said. Whilst it's easy to dismiss folk tales of 'back in the day' as poor science, they're all we have got to go by here.
We only really recognise dramatic changes, rather than subtle ones. And how would the Lorne fisherman's grandkids know different, when that is it all it has ever been for him? Many climate change denying Australians attribute it to boom or bust cycles - in a country that has little rain then a lot of rain, insects, birds and animals will mate like crazy when the conditions are good, and then seem to disappear when it's not. And they're right, too. But how to explain the larger changes across time? Australia can't be immune to decline in species just because we have no real data for it. And we're better to be safer than sorry - hence the outcry against the damage the Adani mine in Northern Queensland threatens to local wildlife populations. You only get once chance at this stuff.
Thus, I think about shifting baselines, as it's called in ecology.
Shifting Baseline Syndrome is a psychological measure where we don't recognise changes unless they are sudden and dramatic - the razed forest due to bushfire, for example. The new generation, however, would have only known the absence of the forest. Billions fewer birds, the absence of fish in the southern oceans of Victoria, more intense bushfires - to them, this is the baseline of normality.
This place is part of my identity - of my childhood, of who I am - or was - as a wild ocean girl. My son learnt to count watching the sun go down here. My best friend's family had a shed on the Johanna Blue road, the bluestone chipped alternative road that winds treachourously through hills to the sea. There was a small pot bellied stove, a dusty double bed and a single, and we'd cart water from the property across the road, read her father's surfing magazines, smoke joints, draw, write, dream, whilst the huge waves crashed into our dreams.
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn - Bob Dylan
And so I think about the subjective of human experience on this wild and not so lonely beach, watching the sun go down. I ponder my reactions to the camping fees for a once free spot, the more people on this coastline that makes it a little less wild and free. I ponder why I feel such a sense of ownership, which is not really my right at all, because over by those rocks, the man sitting reading whilst the sun goes down belongs here too, and the man with the hired kombi and his three kids playing cricket, and the group of older woman who've hiked in for the night. They all feel something for this beautiful place. Reverence. Awe. Joy. Love.
Perhaps it's a sense of nostalgia that sets me a dreamin' of what was, and what is, and what will be. It does me no good, of course, except for the tearful poetic foolings that might arise from such reveries. The sun still rises, the insects still bite, the gulls still hope for bits of flesh in discarded bait. Occasionally the fisherman pull their fish from the tides.
This is still a beautiful place. I have no right to call it my own - it is a pleasure for all who dwell a while here. I might miss the lonely beaches that were, and worry about shifting baselines that speak of terrible changes to a much loved landscape, but for now, it is truly beautiful.
I just wish people wouldn't stand between me and my sunset.
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Contemplating at the beach … this is what are beaches are made for, especially during sunsets.
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Isn't it? Can't beat it. And can't begrudge others also contemplating with me. xx
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OMG what a beautiful travel post and so much more! The photography is awesome and so are your insightful thoughts. Shifting Baseline Syndrome - I can definitely see that happening.
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Thanks so much. X
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What beautiful writing… I love the Great Ocean Road, some of my favourite places on mainland Australia are along there (more the forests than the coast for me). In some ways the south coast of Western Australia near where I live is like what the Great Ocean Road looked like 30 or more years ago. Wild, untamed and relatively unvisited as it is mostly inaccessible unless you know your way around on foot or have a very good 4x4. Great photos!
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Thanks. I spent about a year In Margarets around 96. Travelled up west coast. Six months in Kalbarri. Gnarloo. Great memories. Would love to come back soon. Hubbys doing up a 73 Series 3 Landie, so may be over that way next year.
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It is a beautiful part of the world, I grew up in Queensland and South Aus, but moved here with the wife (and now 3 kids) nearly 11 years ago, we love it. You won't recognise Kalbarri unfortunately, they are developing all of the natural attractions with massive platforms and sealed paths... it just isn't the wilderness it once was sadly.
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I don't know about a sense of ownership as such but I'm a selfish git that totally like having places all to myself XD (though in a pinch just plain old quiet/not heavily trafficked is tolerable)
I really miss beaches.
That's a pretty impressive sunset, did you get blown away? :D
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I am blown away by every sunset to be honest! I am the same.. like in my head Im like.. who are you people on MY beach lol...
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Pretty nice!!! Speaking on insect and bird declines, you might want to watch this.
Then when you've watched that, watch this. Terrifying.
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I'm not sure if I can, if it's not good news. My heart might break.
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Once again, a wonderful reading with so many bits of it speaking straight from my heart.
The beanie-wearing salmon: we made these jokes on the We(s)t Coast of Canada, that even the salmons and the bears are likely to wear a toque!
More importantly: when you mentioned ownership it sounded more like belonging to me. The two concepts are easily confused, but to me it seems like you feel you belong to the place, and thus to the beach, the fish, even to the biting insects and the hikers. So inadvertently they also belong to you in the same fashion. That doesn't mean you own them.
Great photos, by the way. I love the heart-shaped puddle with the trees' reflection in it!
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@riverflows, amazing pictures. I went on a podium discussion on that fact of the 77 percent of pollinating insects vanished since 1989, a while ago. Apparently it's worse here now. After watching Greta Thunberg's speech i was even more moved when i read this. What makes me believe we can tackle it all, is if more people on here know that the responsibility is thus even more everyone's with blockchain. I often wonder if we will actually take charge and realize that this freedom is also what we wanted. Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of writing.
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Thank you. I worry we are too busy making points over climate action. I did.. and do.. feel rather melancholic right now.
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Those photos!!!!!
I miss my trips along the GOR. Seeing that familiar golden mists...
Shifting baselines. 😊🙏🏽☯️
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The gold mist was just stunning. Plus, I had polarizing lens on.. Jamie didnt and was wondering why I was gaga. His tint was blueish. I have poetry forming in me. Nature always moves me so.
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I love your musings, such a perfect reflection of you and your wonderful heart that observes and acknowledges what others just pass on by. This is a beautiful beach, thank you for sharing it with us xxx
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Aw, thankyou. I'd love to take you to this beach. It's just gorgeous.
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No @steemitworldmap? LOL... to encourage more people to flock there?
Been a VERY long time since I was last there!! Hard to think of it as being busy.
Land ownership and coastal access are HUGE issues everywhere - here the big resorts try to claim "their" bits of beach and make them private. They simply close off the access. :(
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That sucks. They are constantly fighting it here. Yep.. I did actually think of that re Steemit world map! I wonder how many people actually use that travelling lol.
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Probably as many people as those who buy their lunch with lotus tokens 🤣 All new frontiers... even if no one ever uses the map, they have nice curation, decent upvotes & it's a cool idea. 😊
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It IS a good idea. I didnt mean it wasnt. Just meant the amount of people using Steem in general. A moment of despondency.
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OMG, both of you and sunset really stunning. ❤
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Thankyou so much... amazing what good light can do to hide flaws... 😂
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That truly is a beautiful spot and looking at the photos and reading your prose bought back memories and feelings of what it was to walk the sandy beaches with the abundance of life and to gaze into the sunset! But I was the tourist on the ocean beaches far from my land locked home.
Back home we have the same thing with the lake beaches, where on hot days you would gather up the kids to head to the beach. Now they want to charge you to get into the beach!
Our local little lake at the end of our road was a main gathering point for the community but then the municipality wanted to build up the roads and they cut off the underground stream that was feeding that lake and the lake started to die. This was after much protest from the community members and we protested the clear cutting of the forest around us but they kept moving the machines on and continued to clearcut - it just breaks my heart to see the barren lands and displaced animals! We have our little oasis around us but what will the future generations experience of this once pristine wilderness?
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Great impressions, greetings from Germany 🤙🏼
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