There were no signs of sea lice scuttling as we walked along the path, so there is no likelihood of a very high tide tonight. All the action is on the sea, in the heaving swells giving a demonstration of what is to come. As the swells rise into peaks on reaching shallow waters, it is easy to picture the spray that whips back from the crests as the flying manes of true white horses, galloping towards the finishing line where they will disperse into froth on the rocky shore.
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| You can see the silhouette of a lone fisherman - the whole area in front of him is solid rock about 2 feet below the surface to the second breaker, so I don't know what the chances of him catching supper are! |
The sea has been pounding this shoreline for more than 250 000 years now and the rounded boulders that form a jumbled natural breakwater that protects the sandy interior from flooding must surely have been much larger and squarer when first the land rose to modern levels. This whole area is a wave-cut platform and was originally the seabed, which is obvious from the white sand that forms the basis of my garden soil. It is only the thousands of years of mulch from the milkwoods that grow here that have given the soil any kind of nutritive qualities, I'm sure. It is quite incredible that the boulders haven't been ground to sand by now. If they were taken away, it would probably take only a few years for the sea to reclaim a large portion of the land around the Slangkop lighthouse.
However, I doubt that anyone would ever need to interfere with the coastline - after all, SA National Parks consider the builders of stone sculptures to be interfering with nature and push them over! The picture below shows the sculpture culprit at the peak of his skills, when so many people derived such pleasure from these arty outcrops!
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