Musings from the Seaside

I’m been presenting myself for weekend penance at the South Coast, New South Wales, quite a bit lately. The South Coast, if you are unfamiliar, is the coastal belt between Sydney to the north to the Victorian border to the south.

My location of choice for optimal sun and sand experiences occasioning sunburn is Broulee, just south of Bateman’s Bay, which is often branded as Canberra by the Sea. Broulee, population of just over 1,700, is so laidback and blasé about life that it's on the brink of toppling over.

It feels like the place is a refugee of the 1950s or 60s, whichever decade was the last one with unobtrusive capitalism and a laissez faire attitude and I do not hate this. Sure, internet reception is scant (but very curiously receptive on the beach), there is not a lot to do if you don’t want to devote the entire day to sand worship, and there is just one takeaway shop, which has implausible opening hours for an operational small business. 

On the flip side, there are no loud and kitschy billboards encouraging food or services, just sporadic signage of a small business courteously and respectfully expressing the purpose of their existence.

If you need to uber-advertise your goods and services to the market for a price to do capitalism properly, Broulee doesn't really care a whoop-de-doop.

What commodity are they selling in Broulee, then? If anyone cared, it would be lifestyle of ye olde days, by effortlessly laidback means.

I don’t care how current your hipster status is, how many mason jars containing salad you have in your arsenal, how many trimmed bearded men work for your ironically named business, you cannot engineer ye olde days. Thank goodness the hipsters haven't gotten their conceited mittens on this seaside haven.

Walking in the direction of the ocean I can smell it's briny aroma, but it’s not always that way. The wind has to be blowing from the east, or at least from the north. 

October in Broulee? It’s all about cold sandcastles and iced water. I go there for the simplicity, the ease of life. Minimalism. 

Also, there are birds. Lots of them. David Attenborough would be able to tell you more. Or anything. The birds are arguing about bird things. Or just being interactive in a shared space. Who knows the ways of birds.

Painted whores of the plant world

The first of the summer flies harass me as I walk past all the painted whores of the plant world (A Homer or Bart Simpson reference to flowers) on the way to the beach. 

Teenage boys ride their bikes past me on the footpath, precariously balancing their beloved surfboards in their strong arm, forgetting that when they recklessly spin around to chat to their friends the board whips around too and there goes my ribs if I wasn’t quick like a butterfly.

And then I see the offending sign, which is always there; a picture of a dog with a cross through it. DOGS NOT ALLOWED. Seriously, if you a barbarian who does not like watching dogs playing on the beach then we have nothing to say to each other and move along from this planet please.

I love watching people playfully encouraging their dog to do instagrammable tricksies for photographs, which they obligingly do, through a volley of barks which ricochet for kilometres along the beach.

This visit, to the beach, I had to be vigilant. There are brutal brutes seaside who will find you. And then they will hurt you. But they are so pretty, so one must get up as close and personal as possible to their tentacles to admire their bright hues. Bluebottles. Lots of ‘em.

The statistics are not in your favour when it comes to avoiding their sting, and the little suckers pack quite a punch. I imagine it is their vengeance for being purged from the ocean.