A Tale of Two walks

We walk under a dome of bright blue sky. Barely onto the trail I notice a distinctive splash out in the cobalt ocean. ‘Look, a whale!’ We stand and stare. Sure enough, that distinctive spray of a blowhole exhalation. Then a flipper, slapping on the water as the leviathan rolls. A tail slap.

It does something to me, seeing whales. Brings a surge of warmth. A deep satisfaction. Even when they are so far away. It’s something about knowing they are there. That they exist, in all their incongruous hugeness.

We walk on and I carry inside me a lightness of knowing the whales are out there in the ocean beside the coastal heath we are walking through.

The bluestone of the path crunches noisily underfoot. Too noisily. But it makes for easy walking. We amble up and down hills and around twists and turns. There is some bird chatter and a few wildflowers making a mid-winter appearance. The crash of waves drifts up on the still air.

We descend to a beach where a small waterfall trickles a couple of metres down from the dune vegetation and pools amid the sand and granite. It trickles in a narrow stream to the sea, carving a channel through the sand. The edges of the channel are stratified, narrow bands of black, white and grey where the ilmenite separates from the silica sands. Geological process in action in human time.

We leave the beach and head back to our parked car, retracing our steps through the coastal heath. Strange the difference made by going the opposite direction. I notice flowers I hadn’t seen before and a steep descent where I hadn’t noticed the climb. I must be fitter than I realise, I think as I carefully tread down the hill.

Out to sea the whales are still there. We stop and watch, pointing. There! And there. And there! I get back into the car full of gladness, happy to have found this new trail so close to home.

Forty eight hours later we decide to walk it again. A different day with different weather. The ocean this day is slate grey. The sky above it an ashen watercolour wash. We see no whales. There seems to be more flowers. A purple flag lily right beside the path. Hibbertias out in their sunshine yellowness. A smattering a pea flowers, wattles and others. White, yellow, pink and purple. I don’t know if many more flowers suddenly bloomed with the two days of sunshine we have had, or if it is the greyness of the day that makes them stand out more.

We get to the Waterfall Beach but decide to press on; the trail continues so we might as well do so also. After five minutes the rain starts to splatter. I hear it hitting my hat. Feel it on my arms, bare now that I have tied my jumper around my waist.

I don’t mind walking in the rain, although we don’t especially feel like getting soaked today. Still, it is barely drizzle. We keep walking.

The track leads through a thicket of peppermints. It has a strange fairylike quality. It is completely still, just the drip of the light rain. We walk on for another fifteen minutes or so but it’s way past lunchtime and we’re getting hungry. We turn around and retrace our steps. Again, I am surprised by how different the walk seems going the other way. I think about this as I walk along. I prefer walking circuits or going from one point to another. I generally choose not to walk one way then turn and go back. But this trail seems to be telling me otherwise, showing me that there and back can be interesting in its own way.

The rain eases and we are back in view of the ocean. It is still grey. Still and grey. Water, sky, track. All shades of grey. Even the heath is grey-green. It is soothing. We walk in silence. Just the crunch of our feet on the path. I look out to sea. No whales. Just surf pounding on the rocks, sending plumes of spray high into the air.

Rob, just in front of me, suddenly stops and points. A kangaroo, sitting on the side of the track, watching us. No, not one, two. No, three! Two on one side of the track and one on the other. The two hop across to the one and the three stand together looking at us. They are only a few metres away but don’t jump away as we pass. Their eyes follow us but they don’t bolt.

We walk on back to the car and have covered ten kilometres by the time we get there. What’s more, we have dried off. And I know this is a walk we will come back to time and time again and each time it will be a little different, it will reveal a little more of itself.

Thanks for reading,

Jill