Salt Water Ripples

Casuarina Beach

We live not far from Casuarina Beach and it’s been a part of my family and work life for a long time. It’s a ‘low energy’ beach, with a long and gently sloping inter-tidal area. It’s not a white sand and surfie kind of place. But the tides are massive – up to eight metres – and the water moves in quickly and changes the landscape as it does. It’s a beach used by many for relaxing, walking their dogs and worshipping the sunset. It’s a beautiful place. It’s where we celebrated our daughter’s 21st birthday. It’s important to us.

In the early 1990s I led a team that set up and ran a monitoring program along Darwin’s beaches. People tend to get worried when high tides and winds combine to strip away the foredunes and leave the beach looking irreparably damaged. In reality, this is what beaches do; they are nature’s buffer between ocean and land, a place of change. It’s only a problem when we’ve mistaken the permanence of this land and decided to build our homes, cafes and lives on this fragile strip. So then, we try to impose our idea of permanence and demand answers in engineering and millions of dollars of angst.

Fortunately, Casuarina Coastal Reserve is a conservation reserve that embraces and celebrates the buffer. Its sands come and go, and that’s what we were measuring in those early years of the ‘90s; how much the sand came and went over the seasons. It was a great day when we got to survey the beach to see what had changed. My ideal job.

Now I’m getting the measure of the beach in a different way. When the tide is out – and it can go out for hundreds of metres – there is a cosmos of ripples with a story to tell about how the salty water last moved and flowed above. Sometimes it also tells a story about how freshwater flowed onto the beach from the cliffs and dunes beyond, and from the creek defining the southern end of the Reserve.

Finding a place to mix and pour plaster onto those ripples is like being in a lolly shop. What story do I want to pick? The one of a gentle to and fro? Or the one where the forms are morphing and bifurcating? Unquestionably, it must be the ghost of a flow and be interesting and beautiful. Endlessly beautiful.
I’m still figuring out the process and finding ways to do this justice. It will take a while. But I will enjoy it. I will enjoy the connection to the beach again and soaking in the layers of meaning that creating something in this space provides. Because it’s not just any space, it’s this space. It’s my story enmeshed in many others, over time and history.

Landscapes in Miniature

Living not far from a long wide beach gives much opportunity for walking and obsessing about textures. I trained in geomorphology – a study of landforms – and I’m constantly reminded while walking the beach that the forces of nature that mold our landscapes...

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Ancient Flows

Inviting, harsh, beautiful, and hot. And there are ripples in the rock! This is why we’re here. These finds make my heart leap. Long narrow streams of clear water gush through gaps and drop into the next pool. A multitude of tiny waterfalls and the occasional captivating drop.