Take a walk in August from Maroochydoore to Caloundra? Along the beach at low tide? While we no longer call it ‘tramping’, read between the lines here and it is still a fair distance to hike. When Vance and Nettie Palmer walked this southward route about ninety years ago, they encountered all kinds of creatures and plants we might not see today. Some-things have changed, some-things have not. Vance Palmer is still right when he tells us that meandering along the beach, not ‘spinning at top pace’, (even if top pace is thirty miles an hour which is hardly what we call speed today) is what you must do if you want to see shells, and fish, and more.
This is an early piece by Vance Palmer, early in his days spent living at Caloundra and early in his attunement to the place, and early in his ecocritical and placemaking writings. Still he was Queensland born and bred and well used to beachcombing; part of his writing philosophy was the importance of as a more recent critic has phrased it of ‘profound individual and social experiences that constitute enduring and recognisable territories of symbols’. Spinning at top pace meant places would become little more that a superficial cloak of ‘arbitrarily fabricated and merely acceptable signs’.
‘Maroochydoore to Caloundra: A Day’s Tramp Beside the Sea’ (Daily Mail, 7 August [1926?])
Vance Palmer
A day’s walk along the coast, with a low tide and a hard stretch of sand beneath the feet, is a delightful experience. Luckily, at this season of the year the tides are low in daytime, and there is rarely need to plough through the loose sand that sometimes make coastal walking feel like trudging through fields of snow. There are occasional strips of our coast where a car could spin for 30 miles at top pace without a check: the outer beach of Bribie, for instance. But on the mainland, little tidal creeks and occasional jutting headlands put obstacles in the way of a car. Who wants to spin at top pace, though, along these marvellous sands, where the chief pleasure is idling and doing a little beachcombing by the way? There are always shells; strange fish come ashore; the upper sands are littered with flotsam and jetsam that may be pieces of wreckage, but more probably are useless junks of timber thrown overboard by various ships’ carpenters.
From Maroochydore south to Caloundra the coast runs for 20 miles [32.1km] in an almost unbroken line, and for most of the way the amateur beachcomber can feel sure he is exploring virgin soil. Maroochydore is a little township clustering round the estuary of the Maroochy River, a pleasant stream flowing down through the canefields from Yandina, and watering one of the richest and most closely-settled districts in Australia. It reaches the sea in a wide inlet with low banks, and round this smooth stretch of water sprawl the scattered houses of Maroochydore. It is a modern watering place with café, cinemas, and all the paraphernalia beloved by summer visitors but, in addition, it has real charm and beauty. Wide stretches of still, blue water, lapping up to the very posts of the houses, and big combers breaking on the white beaches outside! No wonder the cars come spinning down to it from the ranges in summer and the little boats chug down the river from Yandina, laden with excursionists! It is one of the places that has created itself in the image of the cheerful holiday-maker, from the gay little boats drawn up on the sands to the tinned music issuing from the open windows.
But, leaving it, and going south along the beach, one enters a more primitive world. There is the great bulk of Coolum behind, seeming to rise like a whale’s back from the sea, though in reality it is several miles inland. In front is a strip of white beach, broken only by the impressive headland, where the Mooloolah River enters the sea. This swiftly-flowing river is the first obstacle to the walker. It runs out under the shadow of a black, beetling cliff, and is so masked by the white sand that one comes on it with surprise. A perfect entrance for small boats! So completely does the steep headland protect it that the fishermen from Mooloolabah, a couple of miles higher up, can go out and in safely, even in rough weather. To cross it, one must leave the beach and go inland a little to the township, where there are always plenty of boats lying at anchor. At low water it would almost be possible to paddle across the shallow lagoon, but when the tide is high it comes brimming up among the mangroves, where sharp roots lie in wait for the naked feet. Once across, a narrow track leads back to the beach again, and the hard, white sand stretches ahead as far the eye can see.
It is here that one can appreciate what is meant by the “long wash of Australian seas”2 The lazy Pacific rollers come in on a mile-long front, lift themselves with an effort, and seem to stay suspended in a frozen, greenish arch for an indefinite time before they fall with the crash of splintering glass. The pause, momentary as it is, leaves an impression of eternity. Its effect is most vivid when one of the schools of mullet that are passing up the coast at this time of the year come edging into the land. The fish, caught up in the roller, are outlined against the glassy inner curve like creatures in a bowl. They fall and are lost, and the next wave takes up another lot. Yet always one seems to be gazing at the same row of fish, flattened out against the same glass. It is a spectacle that lays a spell upon the senses.
A little further on a curdling of the smooth water beyond the breakers hints at porpoises at play. There is a continual splashing, a gleam of satiny black shapes, a hovering of brown sea-hawks above. A closer inspection shows that they are not porpoises, but bonito. The water is literally alive with them, short, chunky fish of a couple of pounds or so, and if they were of commercial value a school like this would set some of our fishermen beating up the coast. Unfortunately, though, they are coarse eating, and there is little demand for them. Occasionally a Greek or Italian vendor will take a case of them, but only when daintier fish are scarce; and there is no need to be driven back to bonito now when the schnapper are biting, and sea mullet coming up the coast like the drifting shadows of clouds.
This little strip of coast has a particular interest for beachcomers. Not long ago a leading Sydney conchologist, on his way down from the Barrier Reef pronounced it to be the best in the world for shells.
“For numbers, that is”, he qualified the statement. “Some of the Japanese beaches have a slight lead, as far a variety is concerned.”And far ahead, a couple of black figures appear to be brooding over some rare specimen. They put their heads together for a while, and then walk on in slow procession, one after the other. On this deserted beach, miles away from any house or sign of human habitation the presence of men is such a rare event that our curiosity is roused. Who are these strangers in the distance? Holiday visitors that have wandered a little further afield than usual? The speculation is soon answered by the presence of tell-tale footprints in the sand – three long toes spread wide apart at intervals of a couple of feet or so! The emus look around, hold a hurried consultation, and make across the sand at a stately trot for the scrubby bush in-shore.
It is mostly plain country that skirts this strip of coast – open, untouched territory that is a sanctuary for emus or any other kind of wild thing. From the higher ground one can look as far as the eye can see and not come across a sign of human presence. Low-lying sandy soil, covered with shrubs and various healthy plants, and seeming as if it would remain untouched for a hundred years! In spring this sombre mass of spiky vegetation can produce a miraculous mass of bloom, from the quiet little wax flowers to the large and gorgeous Christmas bells. It can show a riot and intensity of colour that more fat and fertile country can never hope to achieve; but the time of its flowering is not yet.
A wide sheet of water catches the eye. It is Garramundi lagoon, one of those slow-flowing creeks that have their entrances to the sea shut off for most of the year by heavy banks of sand. Occasionally, after a fall of rain, their waters overflow and cut a channel outward, giving freedom to the swarms of mullet and whiting they have brought to maturity. But the tide forces the sand back again and dams them up, so that they spread over the country behind like a lake. A delightful spot, Garramundi with it overhanging tree and dark, sandstone rocks! But we are on familiar ground now, and the grey headlands of Caloundra loom in the distance, not more than three or four miles away. Soon comes the gleam of the lighthouse shining brightly through the dropping dusk.
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