I took the featured photo at 3pm on 13 March 2024.
it shows the largest number of birds I have ever seen at one moment on the Coorong – a place I have visited more than a few times, over more than six decades.
Footnote:
Q: what would happen if the Southern Ocean were to breach the long and narrow Younghusband Peninsula? ( a small part of which provides the photo’s horizon)
A: the uncommonly long estuary that is the Coorong would cease to exist, at least as we now know it.
It is also possible that an inland-moving dunefield could smother the Coorong’s south lagoon.
The current, rapidly-rising rate of coastal erosion would suggest that neither of these scenarios is “highly unlikely”, and that either one could eventuate much sooner than most people imagine.
Click here for an ABC News story, published in June this year.