The tide seemed a long way out again today, so our meandering walk was around where the mouth of the Erskine river should be and then off up the beach to North Lorne.
The Erskine is closed off by about ten metres of sand at the beach, I guess the water seeps through gradually, probably in both directions, although the estuary is at the highest I’ve ever seen it. The river is the colour of old tea and swarming with small bream — and some larger ones that John has brought home for dinner from fishing. Every day there are people lining the boardwalk hopefully dangling a line baited with bread, hauling up endless undersized fish and hoping for a bigger one…
The rock-pools were all completely exposed and accessible, but all seem much more empty than the ones I remember as a child, maybe I’m just not looking hard enough or long enough, but other than the weeds and the limpets and snails, there’s not a lot there. Where are all the crabs and small fish that I remember? Is it just a different beach and rock-pools to the ones I used to visit, or has 30 more years of thousands more people visiting really had this much effect?
