Monday, February 16, 2009

WHILE ADELAIDE BROILED . . .

















It just so happens that as my hometown recently endured day after day of 40 degree temperatures, photographer Warren Field and I slunk down to the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The beaches and headlands were great, but the thing that I'll never forget is the afternoon arrival of the south-easterly ocean breeze. Some days it was a gentle but persistent waft of cool air weaving up the gullies. Other times it arrived with a big roll of moist cloud that unfurled through the scrub and snagged in the old ridgetop pine trees - much to the delight of the yellow-tailed black cockatoos. I doubt that the temperature ever got above the high 20's the whole week, and by nightfall, after the ocean had done its thing, I guess was maybe 17 or 18 degrees. Often we were out on a ridge when the southerly airs turned up and after a few days we started to look for the breezes riffling in across the surface of sea, and we waited as the coolness brushed over us, all salty and dank, and tinged with that hint of wet straw, and every time it felt like the best thing ever and for that moment there was nowhere else we'd rather be.



photo Warren Field

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