BEACH DAY

I was sitting amongst the rockpools, watching the dawn light play across the water above a forest of algae, when I saw the octopus.

I had come to Cronulla Beach to watch the sun rise. It’s a ritual that I started on the tail end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. I’d sleep a couple of hours, get up at 4 a.m., hop on a train down to the beach, and find a place to watch the sun.

It’s almost always a solo trip, and I had never been joined by an eight-legged companion before. When I saw it creeping through the seaweed, I was so surprised that I sprang to my feet and startled the poor creature. It instantly turned black and scrunched itself into the shadow of a rock.

I settled back down to watch it, delighted by this sighting. Octopuses are one of my favourite animals, and this was the first time I had seen one in the wild.

Slowly, it curled out from beneath its rock. Its colour shifted as it moved, blending seamlessly with its surroundings, changing to camouflage itself among the swaying seaweed and sandstone. It kept a large, intelligent eye on me as it did a loop around the rock where I was sitting, slinking from one crevice to another.

It was nice to have some company. I felt an odd sense of connection to it – I had so often come to the beach to observe the sea, but this time it felt like the sea was observing me too. It was an intimate moment, sitting there with a curious octopus while the sun slowly rose above the horizon.

It eventually slipped away, gliding smoothly through the water. There was a special little joy in letting it go without trying to chase it through the rockpools. The octopus had shown up, said hello, and we had spent some time together, and that was more than enough to leave me absolutely rapt.

Besides, there were other critters to admire. I was surrounded by pools that bristled with life: seaweed, seashells, tiny darting fish, shy side-walking crabs.

A single pool could have hundreds of tiny molluscs. Masses of limpets and whelks clung steadfastly to the rocks, alongside clusters of tiny blue periwinkles, zebra snails with their titular stripes, and delicately patterned turban shells.

Some of the shells clung to strands of Neptune’s necklace, an algae that looks like floating strings of green grapes gathered together in great tendrilly masses. Each “grape” has little dimples on it, which are apparently its sex organs!

I found brilliantly red waratah anemones, which used to delight my brother and I when we were children. We would poke their soft, fleshy centres to trigger the sticky tentacles and shrieked when they sucked at our fingers.

There were also slow-moving cushion starfish, which have not just five, but eight stubby little arms. I found several active ones, which made up for their lack of speed with their interest in climbing all over each other.

I spotted a few live crab specimens, scuttling about in rock crevices. (I also saw more than a few vacated crab shells and legs scattered about — RIP.)

There is also, of course, the splendour of the sky above the sea. It was a mostly clear day, with the clouds stretched out low above the horizon and the blue sky arching overhead.

I kept pausing in my exploration to watch the rhythmic movement of the waves crashing against the shore. There’s a rise and fall of noise — the building surge of water, the collision against the rocks, the hiss of receding foam. It represents not just the power of the ocean, but also the scale of our world held in delicate tidal balance with the moon.

I’m particularly drawn to the patterns and shapes you find in rocks by the sea. The waves shape the rock into wild, intricate shapes and pale sand traces out the crevices. Piles of round sandstone pile together in a jumble like the toys of a baby giant, their surfaces streaked by rusty red bands of oxidised iron.

I also love the tangled hardiness of plants close to the sea. They tend to be robust, able to tolerate the wind and saltwater. Pennywort was everywhere, growing in blankets across the grassy patches where the sand of the beach gave way to drier land. On a school excursion I had learned that you can lick the leaves and they taste salty from the sea (but I didn’t sample any on this particular trip).

I scribbled down whatever I saw: water, stone, plants. I spent ten minutes leaned over a railing trying to figure out how to capture the shape of seafoam and its shadows across the sand, and the sparkling glint of sunlight. The wind kept stealing my hat and my hands started shaking tremendously in the cold, which actually kind of helped with getting down some of the wavy lines down.

Eventually my wandering took me into the dunes. It’s always hard to understand the scale of the dunes, which look like gentle hills from afar, but become steep mountains of sand up close.

Finally, I conceded to my dehydration and strolled back into Cronulla to get some water and fresh fruit. Only half the day had passed by that point, but I had been up since well before dawn so it felt like much longer. I ate an apple in the park by the station. Then, smelling like sunscreen and sweat, delirious from lack of sleep, but giddy with happiness, I caught the next train back to Sydney.