The van headed for the little doglegged peninsula. We found a popular foreshore campsite where we camped in the dunes. The golden sand was all around, and the only thing separating us from the waves of the ocean was the small sand dunes. Here, we would lie in bed at night and listen to the waves crashing on the beach.
The first day was stinking hot. We all sweltered and tried to huddle in the small amount of shade that we had. That evening we looked out over the sand dunes before we went for a work. Dad pointed to something in the water and said “What’s that?” It took us a few minutes before we had all found what he was looking at. There were two black fins moving around in the ocean. We watched them swim up and down the coast, in towards the coast then back out again. Sometimes they rose out enough that we could see a little of a black body, other times they were deeper so we could only see the point of the fins. When we lost sight of them we walked down to the beach for a swim.
In the Water
Dad realized he had forgotten something and went back to the van for it. Mum and the kids went down to the water to start swimming. Peter was wading with Edmund and Lucy on either side of him, and Susan heading a little further out when Mum warned everyone “The rocks here are really sharp. Be careful!” Then Mum noticed a beautiful bright red crab and two very pretty pink cockleshells, “Susan! Come and look at these shells I’ve found!”
Instead of coming to Mum to see the shells, Susan started howling with pain. “My foot! My foot!” She managed between howls.
Out of the Water
Mum thought that Susan was crying wolf, so again said, “I’ve found the prettiest pink shells! And there is a beautiful red crab, too!” Mum noticed the blood-stained water, and grabbed the hopping Susan. Peter carried Edmund up over the dunes to the van, while Lucy ran ahead to get Dad to come and help carry Susan. Mum trudged up to the top of the dunes and a jog carrying Susan, before Dad met them and carried Susan the rest of the way to the van. Dad tried to flush out the profusely bleeding wound with saline and then said, “It’s too deep. We’ll have to take her down to the hospital to get it cleaned out. It might need stitches.” Mum nodded, and went to lock the campervan door. Mum then turned around and vomited. Peter got Lucy, Edmund, and himself into the car and buckled up, while Dad carried Susan into the car. Mum grabbed a few things they needed, vomited again another two times, then got in the car, too.
At the hospital, two kind nurses chatted to Susan while they cleaned her foot out, applied betadine, rinsed it off, and then inspected the wound. The nurses were unsure if it should be stitched or not, so they photographed the wound. They send the image to the doctor-on-call before ringing her to see if she wanted to come in and stitch up Susan’s foot. She advised them to steri-strip it and bandage it; that should be enough to hold the wound together till it heeled. Luckily, it proved to be a good solution as Susan’s foot did heal within a few weeks leaving just a large, pink scar.
Susan and Lucy thought they were in heaven on the beach. There were so many whole shells to collect, of varying size and beauty. Some of the shells were as large as the girls’ fists. The movement of air inside the shell sounded just like the ocean when you held it against your ear.
The kids dug caves in the sand dunes and created little shell communities. They all worked together to dig more and more elaborate caves. From the moment they got up in the morning, they were outside digging. Everyone was getting along very nicely.
We went for a drive along the coast. We had only gone a few hundred meters when a snake slithered across the road in front of the car. Everyone peered out the window until the last tip of it disappeared into the bushes. “That’s jolly exciting!” Peter exclaimed, “We’ve seen two fins in the ocean last night, and now we’ve seen a snake! What luck!”
We found a number of small campsites and picnic grounds along the narrow, dirt roads. Many of the campsites were beachside or on the sand dunes overlooking the water. We could have got our campervan into one large one, which was right on the beach. We went for a walk along the beach to a rocky area with lots of rockpools. We spent hours sifting through those rockpools. Dad overturned lots of rocks for us searching for crabs. Mum helped the girls search for pretty shells. Everyone looked for little fish swimming in the pools, and sea anemones. Susan had to be very careful not to get her foot wet, and kept getting told off by everyone for getting too close to water.
The flies were so brazen that even waving at them didn’t help. They didn’t care at all about insect repellent. They often wouldn’t even move until they were swatted. Poor Edmund was covered in flies that just wouldn’t care that the baby was waving them away. We had only been back from the rock pools for half an hour or so when we decided to head off because of the flies.
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