At the End of the Earth.

Paradise Bay

Camp site on King George's sound. W.A.

 

At the end of the Earth,

The wind is in the driving seat.

 

Swaying on a small meadow above the bay,

my bubble tent bobs gently.

I am happily enwarmed in a feather duvet.

 

When the wind whacks and wobbles it and whips up between its inner and outer skins, the air moves inside as one body and my body feels floated on it.

 

Ti-tree, gums and Ecalyptus and a large variety of other plants, shrubs and trees I cant identify, scent the air and remind me of the Med - but the perfume is lighter and higher - maybe just cleaner! 

 

Little clicky crickets duet - zit ZIT, zit ZIT, zit ZIT, rhythmically punctuating the windsound rather than delivering the continuous zizzzzzzzzzzz I am familiar with.

 

Maybe this is because it's Spring here. I look forward to returning here in high summer to listen to the cricket chorus.

 

In the morning, I sit up in the tent and see through its arched doorway and through the verdance growing down the bank below this little meadow and glimpse Albany across Frenchmans Bay, and the billion year softened hills around.

 

Luxuriant bush creeps over the dunes right down to the talcum powdered sand. Sand so fine and clean it squeaks and whistles under my feet. Sand so pale its like beaten buttercream spread smoothly around the bay.

 

There is a little white horse frosting on the blue icy cake.

This sand fascinates me.

 

As dusk falls it turns from this delicious creamed oatmeal - flushed with the most delicate of coral - to lilac white - then blue white - and in the moonlight, silver bright.

I move outside the tent and sit on pillows on the prickly grass.

 

In the Spring sun this all sounds quite a cosy scene. Indeed if I stand up to look immediately below me, the sea is a millpond in this sheltered cove, clear as glass and hugged by a heap of buns and flattish loaves, - autumn coloured tweedy boulders.

 

But yesterday under an indifferent, anonymous, high ranging grey and cloudy sky, I felt the vastness of the ocean that pounds up from Antarctica and soaks this cove at almost the southernmost tip of the world and I felt the isolation of the endless coastline that unfolds and unfolds and unfolds around this continent.

 

The night's rough wind has kneaded up a new batch of sandy muffins on the tideline this morning - decorated with ribbon weed, cuttlefish and very pretty jellyfish - brilliant turquoise nipples aereolated through clear gel into a transparent pink frill.

 

Frenchman's Bay campsite is a bit of paradise. Good homely facilities. The lady who cooks in the café here has a one-eyed Staffordshire Bull Terrier and a Pyrenean Mountain dog with a slow, soft woof and an all-black cat. She walks all three morning and evening along the beach and chides them gently from begging at picnicker's tables.

Other morsels:

Even Magpies in the Perth suburbs sing rich.

Oz birds whistle and blow and bubble deluciously! - like ripe plums dropped in a green shady pool.

In Walpole the whistling bird sings " Here comes the Bride" and in Augusta " Trio, Trio, Trio ".

I was alone here to observe, feel and experience.

My lover, born in a huge, dirty city and maybe freaked out by the clean, empty isolation of this tiny whisp of land at the ends of the earth, had felt the need for drugs and departed in the car for Albany - twinkling across King George's Sound - and stayed there all night, sleeping in the car.

My drugs were the wind playing with the special magic of this place and the light, the colours, the sounds, the water, the tides, the moon, the rocks, the changes, the intimate cosiness and the vast distant vistas.