Peace.

Quiet.

Freedom, Wildlife, Campfires, crisp Air & blazing Warmth, the vast and stunning Ocean, the miles of pristine empty Beach. These are a few things that come to mind when I think of my favourite place in South Australia – Grandad’s Beach Block.

Each morning I woke afresh with that feeling of utter wellbeing. Here, everyone was peacefully and blissfully occupied from dawn till dusk, and beyond.  Never did I hear the dreaded ‘Mama, I don’t know what to do’. The boys always woke early (read, before us). Their day followed a pattern that invariably included messing about with a cavernous box of 1980’s Lego or reading, before progressing to digging up the Beach afresh into complex cityscapes until we crossed paths (on the quad-bike) wherein they were lured from their construction to driving the bike (this proud parent reports that they are all pretty proficient now).

I cannot think of a more perfect boy heaven.  In fact this sentiment is definitely not reserved for boys! I had to be dragged away from the place when we finally had to leave.

We managed to eke some nice journal entries out of all 3 boys, we didn’t seem to have enough time for school with the outdoors constantly beckoning. So school went outdoors, where we all learnt astonishing things about the marine debris on the beach.

The boys ran free in pretty much any direction here without us needing to know where or when. Kangaroos occasionally went lolloping about, a stumpy tail lizard and a beach fox and a white bellied sea eagle were amongst our closest neighbours. Dolphins danced for us.

At some point, after an evening walk on the property, Sascha asked to be dropped blindfolded somewhere on the 100 acres wanting to make his own way back in the darkness with a torch. This is what the block does to one, it makes adventurers out of bookworms!

The boys played Police and Burgers (Elliot’s twist on the latter word) with torches way after dark. Samuel would go deep into the bushes and often couldn’t be found, coaxed out only with promises of dessert! Other times he popped up in unexpected places far from the house, sometimes cautioning his adults to be sensible, such as the time Tim and I were on the beach in the pitch black. An overcast evening with no stars or moon, the shells appearing pearlescent on the sand and a little voice cautioning us not to get lost in such blackness as the beach was.

The adults had various diversions such as star gazing, fire watching, competitive darts and losing golf balls to enormous pokey bushes as well as messing about in boats, catching squid, eating, quad biking, lazing, walking, sand dune jumping and so on. The list of things to do is actually endless. I could never get bored at the block.

I took many a long quiet walk straight from the house onto the beach and on and on and on for kilometers not once meeting another soul. Just the sky, sand and sea and their inhabitants for company. Once I spotted a spectacular double rainbow with a storm chasing me homewards, one part of the sky all red and pink and purple, the multicolours of the rainbow against blue skies and the black advancing sheets of rain in the distance.

Every so often, but actually very rarely, over the course of the 20 odd days we spent at Sturt Bay, we’d break from our usual block delights and force the boys and us to do something different for a change. We’d have to brace ourselves for the mutinous cries of horror at such a prospect. To be honest I inwardly echoed the boys objections, I was so happy at the block,  I was not motivated to pursue greener pastures.  However, of course, once we got stuck in, these excursions were always wonderful, such as our day at Innes National Park just along the road, with its dramatic coastal scenery, shipwrecks, historic inland gypsum mines, emus and kangaroos and wallabies all over the place.

Our adventure day out on a boat in Sturt bay on Tim’s birthday was similarly exciting and culminated in meeting , a pelican, a seal, a skate and helpful Steve. We were woefully unprepared and the boys ate lunch at 5pm that day. For such an adventure to take place the ingredients necessitated the beautiful Bamoo perilously low on fuel, 3 small boys with metaphorical dark clouds over their heads (at being dragged from playing in the sand), one paddle (thankfully) and 2 empty handed but intrepid parents in the entirely perfect setting of the bay. The water was crystal clear and blue and green, and black over the forests of seaweed, always reflecting the changing light and colours of the sky. The boys were keen to try their luck at squidding after our recent success with Captain Nick. A large seal suddenly appeared closeby the boat and we watched awestruck for a while trying to capture his turns and whirls on camera (completely unsuccessfully). There is something quite “speccie” about seeing animals in the wild.

Our adventure was to take us to ‘The Trees’ at the far end of Sturt bay to spot the rare white bellied eagle again, but three-quarters of the way there we ran out of fuel and had to paddle into shore, we were a fair distance out by this time. However, the Bamoo glided effortlessly through the calm waters and we beached and left the boys messing about in the sand as they were definitely not interested in eagle sighting. Our return from the Trees ran us into Steve and co who were fishing (they caught 11 Dozen fish the previous day!) and after brief pleasantries Steve gave Tim a lift home to fetch fuel for the Bamoo. It was a long and beautiful  day out which ended with us all curled up by the wood fire after a hearty and very late ‘lunch’.

All this time, the tractor sat tranquilly in its shed watching drooling boys till our last day when finally  everyone had a go; a somewhat frightening experience for me. Video of Samuel driving the tractor.

So time passed and regrettably we did off course have to leave this lovely insole of the peninsula. I loved every moment and look forward to a return!