vitamin sea

I looked out of the window this morning and then - sotto voice - called for the girls to quickly run over. About thirty feet away, beyond the garden fence on a slope of browned grass, was a delicately grey wallaby. (Or baby kangaroo. I'm still not good at telling. It was a hopping creature with large dark eyes.)

There are many things I love about our new home - looking up at night to see the smudgy pale and brightnesses that is the Milky Way. The lovely gifts my husband gets as a country GP - mandarine jam, date scones, honey, crab. The changing light on the hills outside.

But I miss the sea. And I miss home. And sometimes it feels very far away. (A twenty-two hour drive away, to be precise. Pretty much Edinburgh to Barcelona.)

These photos are old - a year or two ago - from a half finished blog I never posted - and I look at my wild ones in the long-ago, so vibrant and unconstrained on the beach I love so much, and oo and ah over how they've grown and changed, but I look most at the shores of home and wonder when I will return. And I am so grateful that I had that time, I have those memories, to keep me company now, when I am landlocked and so far from home.

three by sea

Sometime in the far-away of last summer, I took my three daughters to the shore, at a place caught between the Pumicestone Passage and a beloved playground on Bribie Island.

The light was waterlogged, impressionistic, and I sat above the tidemark while the welcome swallows swooped and darted around me, and took photos as my children played, watching as they came together and then moved apart, came together then moved apart, each caught in their own world.

The light caught and held them, so at times it seemed they moved within a painting and I watched the changing light and shifting reflections on the glassy water until my youngest daughter persuaded me it was time to be a dinosaur mummy and hatch some sand eggs.

That time is in the 'before' now. But this time of enforced inaction, with nowhere to go and no urgency to do anything. is bringing with it time for reflection, for looking back and remembering how silken and easy the air was that night, the joy of the children, the feel of complete content.

Land-locked (I miss the shore)

Land-locked, house-bound, I miss the shore.

I am so grateful for our garden, for our views to hills and paddock - each mornings sunrise over the hills is a blessing. But I miss the sea.

I've been looking through old photos from when we were home at Christmas - remembering the deep delight of being in the place that makes my heart sing. Remembering my younger children's exhilaration and wonder as they ran and played, observed and studied.

This will not last forever.  I still have hopes that come September we'll be able to go home for a week.

But for now, I look back on photos from our Summer and live vicariously through past joy.

Whales

One of the most magical things about whales (from a purely ego-centric point of view) is how interested they seem in us. It could be a matter of 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer'- and I do see that after we hunted them to near extinction and then polluted the ocean it would probably seem wise of them to keep an eye on us - but that doesn't quite seem to be it. 

We journeyed up to Hervey Bay recently and took one of the whale watching boats out to see the Humpback whales on their annual migration. It was truly amazing how intent the whales appeared to be in coming up to the boat, showing off, and having a look. They splashed their flippers and circled the boat repeatedly, and it really seemed like they were checking us out. 

In all the vast space of the ocean, and even in all the vast space of the bay, they approached us with curiosity and playfulness. My two year old, whose obsession with the Octonauts - cartoon characters who rescue a variety of marine animals-, recently eclipsed her interest in dinosaurs, was entranced. And, I may be biased (almost definitely biased) but they seemed to be especially interested in her - often following as she ran to the far end of the boat from the crowd. ( We ran from end to end of the boat many times over the course of the morning. Many times) 

A few days later, my husband and his friends hired a boat to go out and complained about the whales approaching. Let me repeat - he complained about the amount of whales coming up to his boat. I am still blinking and it's taken me a few months to get around to recording our trip. He said the whales kept swimming around them and then the tour boats would cruise up and then they'd have to move on because the fish would be gone As it was just a small boat he went out fishing with I can only imagine how immense the whales looked from eye level and be exceptionally jealous. Next year I am going out in the fishing boat to see the whales. (No fishing allowed!) 

I have dreams of being eye to eye with a whale. But this close was pretty magical. 

(And any trip no kids fall/jump overboard I count a complete and spectacular success)