Lake Tabourie

We haven't been to the coast much since moving to the country, but when son and daughter in law, E and F, invited us to join them on their seaside holiday for a couple of days, we eagerly accepted.
F had sold some puppies for an outrageous amount of money, and went online looking for somewhere at the coast to take the kids for the whole school holiday.  She found the very house at Lake Tabourie where we used to go for our holidays, years ago!
When E was a baby, we did a camping holiday at Termiel, just down the road from Lake Tabourie.  No disposable nappies in those days.  I had three buckets on the go, (no running water), with Nappy - San and cold salt water, and quite a lot of sand.  Never again.  Our camping days were done for a while, (30+ years, as it turned out).  Friends took us for a weekend to a house they'd found through the ANU at Lake Tabourie.  We fell in love with it.  It became our 'little house by the sea', and we had several holidays every year there, until E and C were well into their teens.
Could a more perfect place for a holiday with children be imagined?  The estuary teems with fish and bird life.  You can sit on the rocks right outside the house and fish, or launch the kayak and potter off upstream if you're old enough.  A little path winds along the side of the estuary through the bush to the beach.  It's sandy and strewn with leaves, and can easily be managed barefoot.  You can take the path up over the sand hill to the ocean beach, a broad sweep of golden sand, unspoilt bush and sand hills, and the huge, sparkling Pacific.  Or you can take the left hand path along the estuary, with endless possibilities for play - in the shallow, clean water, or climbing the steep sand hill right at the edge and sand surfing down into the water, or making sand pies and castles, or sand gardens among the reeds, or burying your Dad in sand, or digging the biggest hole anyone ever dug before.
Or you can walk on across the sand bar to the Island, waves from both sides washing round your legs - sometimes higher! - the dogs barking in excitement, your Mum with her bag on her head to keep it dry.  And you're there, on your own island!  The only other people usually to share it with are a few fishermen round on the rocks.  Sandy bays, rock shelves, friendly waves, shady caves, and finally, the place you go to every time, where the rock makes a natural wall that defines your magic world - of a tall, bush clad cliff, and a generous stretch of sand, and a big rock pool with a sandy bottom, shallow at the edge, then suddenly quite deep, with corners, and nooks and crannies that seem endless, and full of tiny fish and sea creatures of every kind.  This is where Mum and Dad and Grandma and Grandad sit and lean against the rock wall, and watch you catching fish with your net, and draw your attention to any pelicans and sea eagles flying overhead, and doze.
Nothing has changed.  Among all the busy, almost urbanised South Coast holiday spots, from Tathra to Milton, this place remains a backwater.  Possibly because there isn't a single shop.  'Julie's Corner', at the turnoff on the highway, closed down years ago.  It was always pleasantly shabby, a treat to take the children for a walk there for ice creams; later, they would take themselves.  Good for bread and milk.  Now, the site is derelict, and most people roar past at 100kph, and don't know Lake Tabourie even exists.  How sweet to return to a place that seems to have entirely missed out on progress and improvements!
The house is still owned by the same people.  It has undergone some improvements, but to my relief and delight, they only enhance comfort and accessibility.  The relaxed, informal, family feel is exactly the same.  I go from room to room in wonder - still the same green bath! and the yellow and green mosaic tiles that hardly showed the sand and dirt all week!  Repainted, but with the same bright yellows and blues.  Still the wooden floorboards, the screen door crashing every time you went through it, the dark pantry full of the owner's rather interesting crockery and staples.  And the broom cupboard.  (My daughter L, who has come down with us, opens the door of it and says, 'There used to be another world in here!')
I have a photograph of my mother, in her floppy sunhat and skirt pulled up to her thighs, sitting leaning against the rock wall, legs stretched out - how she loved to sunbathe!  She's smiling.  I sit now in the same spot, where I have sat many times.  It is a grandson, H, who I watch.  He has a net, and he's waded in up to his thighs already, too late to take his shorts off.  There are tiny pale grey fish with spots, and black and white striped fish, and shrimps.  Some much bigger fish come out from their hiding place, see H, and quickly go back again.  Some crabs crawl over the rocks.  He swishes the net, intent on the clear depths of the pool. 
'Oh look, what's that bird?' I say.
He looks up briefly.  'It's a pelican, Grandma,' he says, and goes back to the task.
He comes wading out with his prize in his hand, not smiling so much as shining with the pleasure of it, and shows me - a large star fish, playing dead.  We all admire it, then he carries it carefully back into the pool.  His Dad watches, tells him to be careful with it, tells him to put it back where he found it, gazes out at the sea.