Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
By car or bus, the pictured location is circa 45 kilometres south of Adelaide’s CBD.
If you avoid rush hours, a car trip from the heart of Adelaide to Aldinga Beach can take just 45 minutes.
Aldinga Beach is definitely not “just yet more of Adelaide’s dispiriting, seemingly never-ending sprawl”; it has well-protected natural bushland, a large number of resident ‘roos, reefs onto which one can walk, at low tide…and glorious beaches.
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This and the next several chapters in this series all feature wet sand.
Today’s post also has oystercatchers, in “reflective” mode.
Both of the relevant strands are on the northern edge of the Southern Ocean, according to most Australians.
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By their very nature, sandy soils are “poor” – low in nutrients and unable to retain much moisture.
Yet in some places where rain often falls and the sun often shines – including some of Amazonia and parts of the world’s largest sand island – rainforest flourishes.
That island is Australian. (Queensland’s Fraser Island/K’gari)
So too is this post’s sandy, “desert” location, which is circa 900 kilometres distant from any ocean’s shore.
Even an ignoramus would never mistake the Simpson Desert for rainforest, but s/he would almost certainly be hugely surprised to discover just how beautifully vegetated is so much of it. (as are a great many other sandy, “arid” Australian places)
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Definition, ex Wikipedia:
A spit (cognate with the word for a rotisserie bar) or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove’s headlands, by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting the beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach.
If a spit is extraordinarily long, long-established and well-vegetated, many people will fail to recognise that it is a spit.
This post’s big spit is not in the photo’s foreground, and does not have an enormous number of pelicans and cormorants standing upon it.
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Freshly killed, then crunched: European carp are devoured with great gusto by long-nosed fur seals.
Sans table, sans table manners…
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Of course, as we made our return passage through the Goolwa Barrage lock, long-nosed fur seals were again present.
Both the youngster in the above photo and the young adult pictured below were in “postprandial” mode.
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As we approached the Goolwa Barrage, I noticed an unlucky cormorant.
Courtesy of a careless human, the pictured bird probably had a very short future.
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Whilst much the huger number of pelicans favoured the Coorong’s north lagoon on 13 March 2024, a handful of them preferred to fish in and around the Murray’s mouth.
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On the move: one black swan, three cormorants.
Unmoved: one egret.
Wise advice, in some circumstances: see/hear this post’s wonderful musical bonus!
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Variously, resolutely calm or alarmed: many cormorants.
Cucumber-cool: one silver gull, one pelican.
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