a planning meeting update

As promised the planning team for projected improvements to SA coastal communities held an update to tell us what their proposals are and to elicit our opinions.

Just as well - because they are determined to upgrade our picnic spot with bins and horrors! toilets. The Cape Douglas table is fervently against that sort of improvement as we don't want  people electing to camp there. They can come, have a look and go away again.

Their idea of making a safer walkway across the creek to get pedestrians off the road on a blind corner was unanimously voted as first priority; concealed driveway signs also good; more tree-planting; a paved road to the top of Pont Douglas and a sealed car park got the nod.
 

Angela, Joe, planner, Julie discuss the plan

crunch weekend

No going back now. We've decided to live permanently at Cape Douglas so "musical houses" will occur: Alison and Daisy will move into Foote Street and we will sell their house in Bertha Street.

Jon came down this  weekend to discuss with Alison  which of our heirlooms and  excess possessions will be his - and to fall upon the garage sale pile with cries of "I always wanted this" . Beechwood has no storage space and we like its bare white look so we have to be ruthless and reduce to minimal. But this week I will ring the cabinet maker and order a cupboard for upstairs.

Angela from next door dropped in for drinks and, mesmerised by looking at the sea, stayed quite late. She apologised next day and Joe,  her husband,  remarked: 'you'll have to get a cat door for Angela. "  She fixed our rattling flyscreen so she's very welcome.

Crayfish are still very scarce - this week's storm saw the pots dragged 400 metres away and one of Rory's lost - but we've had two feeds of strawberries from the tunnel house,  a meal of peas, two button squashes and two large beetroot.

invasion of the garden club

42 Garden Club members packed into our garage for morning tea, lunch and a meeting. I gave them a talk about how we've been "ungardening" then let them loose with a challenge to discover all of Beechwood's 16 seats - some of them did, even seat 16 which requires climbing up the dune.

 

President Jane welcoming club members

 

Joy, Joyce, Betty, and Gayle made it to seat 16

The "ungardening" concept falls down when you find the tunnel house with peas nearly ready for picking, tomato plants heading for the sky and strawberries ripe in their boxes.

Willow likes being out of the wind in the tunnel house

 

 

The club walked next door to look at Angela's immaculate new garden then on up the road to Widdisons' where Jean has made a magnificent seaside garden with many unusual native plants both on the roadside and into the creek that runs between their house and the sea.

Angela's hair is a Cape Douglas landmark

Everyone seemed most impressed with their day at Cape Douglas and one brave soul (Dot) even had a paddle in the sea. 

Meanwhile David went out in his boat and once they'd gone returned with 19 lovely garfish. 

the first harvest

This morning I picked the first strawberries before the hot north wind cooked them in the tunnel house. Growth has been rapid with the peas forming as you watch. 

 

 

Conditions were good for David to catch 15 garfish out the front - and it wasn't hot where he was, knee-deep in the sea.

David and Rory are crayfishing together which means they use one boat to check their four pots and share the catch. We had the first crayfish then Rory had two and now we've got a cray and two crabs. Local lore says that you don't catch crays and crabs in the same pot and so far that's true.

Crayfish score (caught in David's pots): 3

visitors

A weekend at the beach in somewhat warmer weather means visitors.

We met some new inhabitants on the beach while he was fishing and invited them, Marian and Steve, for drinks on the beach deck - and it was just warm enough to sit out there and watch the sunset.

Di and Rory arrived at "red o'clock " the next evening but we retreated to the upstairs room out of the wind where we could still watch the birds. Di and I prefer "white o'clock ".  

Denise came for lunch then Jon and Jaynee to tell us they will be neighbours,  having bought a house halfway round the bay, then Jan and Fred for dinner.

Sunday Angela and Joe from next door dropped in then elder granddaughter Hannah and her partner ChrisM (to distinguish from the other Chrises)  came to sample jaffles made the old-fashioned way in a jaffle iron cooked on an open fire in the shelter shed.

Here they are constructing their own (chicken is a favourite) -

 

The wildlife visitors included a swamp wallaby that hopped from the road to the beach via the beach deck - too quickly for anyone to take a photo - and a blue-tongue lizard that had Willow fascinated, not a good idea as she might try to get up close and personal with a snake.

 

 

beach mooring

David hasn't used our beach mooring because he thought it was too close to shore and his boat would run aground. Today's tide was very low at 0.2 metres so clad in their very useful waders,  David and Rory dragged it out to a better location. It's an old steel wheel off a piece of farm equipment,  now very rusty but reassuringly hard to move.

the start of the season

The first crayfish of the season was caught this morning by David and presented to me for my birthday.

Along with a porthole - just what I wanted for the wall near the shelter shed. Portholes are hard to find these days but he tracked one down in WA at a defunct foundry.