The Coorong

"Storm boy lived between the Coorong and the sea. His home was the long, long snout of sandhill and scrub that curves away southeastward from the Murray mouth. A wild strip it is, windswept and tussocky, with the flat shallow water of the South Australian Coorong on one side and the endless slam of the Southern Ocean on the other. They call it ninety mile beach. From thousands of miles round the cold, wet underbelly of the world the waves come sweeping in towards the shore and pitch down in a terrible ruin of white water and spray. All day and all night they tumble and thunder. And when the wind rises it whips the sand up the beach and the white spray darts and writes in the air like snakes of salt."

If you want to make your kids cry, read them this. We listened to the audio book on the way to the Coorong. They loved it, despite the tears.

I remember going to the Coorong as a child with a friend, Jo. It was so perfectly beautiful and I just had to take the family there. We stayed one night on the lagoon side where we we had an incredibly peaceful morning with a lovely early walk. Then the children played for ages in the shallow water and the gloriously thick, gloopy mud. After a thorough wash they settled down to do some painting.

In the afternoon we circumnavigated lakes Albert and Alexandrina, catching a little ferry and stopping for a wine tasting along the way. As the light grew soft and our shadows long, we pulled up in the middle of that "long, long snout of sandhill and scrub that curves away southeastward from the Murray mouth". We could hear the Southern Ocean pounding and we wanted to catch the sunset on the beach so we raced over the little trail through 500m of sand dunes to the most magnificent beach and a resplendent sunset.

the view as we crested the last dune

we reached nirvana

We camped behind the dunes by a boat ramp into the lagoon. I have to give a shout out to the nearby town, Goolwa. I also remember this town from a few visits with dear old friend Charlotte but my focus then was on the rocks at the beach. This town is just a charming South Australian gem. Beautiful old buildings in the centre of town a few streets back from the beach, great cafe's and a village that rolls gently down to the water where there is an amazing new playground.