Australian Gourmet Traveller – (02)February 2019 (1)

I

have been beachcombing my

whole life, and by now it has

become more like an instinct

than a hobby. My feet touch sand,

and a moment later I am walking

the tideline, head down, picking

up the odd shell or stone for a closer

look. I have never found a real treasure,

but no expectations seems like a plus to

me. When I beachcomb, any hard-to-find

objects are a long way from my mind,

instead of goals to covet or search for.

It’s a good way to explore new places, but

I prefer familiar bits of coast, especially

the South Coast of New South Wales.

It isn’t very productive, and that sets

the right conditions for luck.

Like many beachcombers I don’t

bring much home – these years have

not produced a collection of any size.

Somewhere I have some pieces of sea

glass, collected before I knew that was

what it’s called. Some people call it

“drift glass”, which sounds appealing.

Drift glass is made when saltwater rolls

pieces of broken bottles over the ocean

floor, as though rubbing them against

sandpaper. These rounded, frosted shapes

take decades to form, as long as a century.

It has local variations as well – along

the pebbly beaches of the Amalfi Coast,

you can find ceramic shards, smoothed

terracotta with colourful blue-and-white

patterns on top, from long-discarded tiles

or pottery work. I kept these, but was not

upset when they disappeared.

There are hundreds of pieces of

ceramic among the Positano beach

pebbles, but it is rare elsewhere. That’s

true of things like shark eggs as well – they

cluster, and then disappear, sometimes

over just a few kilometres. Large shells are

rare everywhere. At a childhood holiday

beach house, I used to read an old book

about beachcombing, with a photo of

a lavish tropical shell on the cover. The

book had big pictures and not very many

words, and I read it over and over. It said

the most beautiful shells were very hard

to find, and older people told me that

they used to be more common, before

poachers had access to scuba gear. There

was only a slim chance I would find the

nautilus shell I was looking for, the one

that had journeyed a thousand kilometres

south to meet me, but slim is not zero.

Instead, the things I found were

beautiful but not rare. There were no

conches or cone shells, though I had

touched the ones my uncle had brought

back from Papua New Guinea. I liked

sea urchins where the spines had been

plucked out by the weather (these are

called “tests”, and their mouths are

named “Aristotle’s lantern”). A coconut

is good, if you are a long way from the

tropics, because it has come a long way.

Sometimes common finds are interesting

en masse: a few strands of bluebottle

jellyfish stinger don’t attract much

attention (only enough to avoid stepping

on them), but a whole beach neon with

tentacles and Admiral’s Hats? That stays

in your memory.

That book said a beachcomber’s

greatest prize was a glass buoy, let loose

from an old fishing net. I can picture

this bauble immediately, wrapped in

rope hatching, the colour not lustrous

but rich, like it had taken on the tint

of the sea (perhaps this blue-green was

meant to be camouflage). The buoys,

the book said, had not been made for

a long time, and came from Japan.

For one to arrive in Australia, it would

have to escape a spiralling current in

the Pacific and drift across the waves for

years. More valuableitems can be found

on beaches – ambergris, thewhale vomit

used to make perfume, is more costly

than gold – but these mysterious curios

have retained their appeal. There are

whole books dedicated just to collecting

them. I saw one of these buoys in a shop

not long ago, but did not think about

buying it. Not when there is one to be

found somewhere, still cool with sand.●

The tiniest treasure found on the shoreline can span the

greatest of times and distances, writesRICHARD COOKE.

Continental

drift

GOURMET TRAVELLER 83

PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES.