The Minda Dune

Yesterday we had a challenging walk. It was my mum. She said, let's go this way for a change, when we got to the esplanade, so the three of us headed off into the teeth of the wind.

It was alright for her, she had a scarf.

The entire bay was empty, except for one little yacht. The horizon was shipfree. The sea was a deceptive shade of brown. The sort of brown that nips up into spiky jabbing black and green jaws at the corner of your eye, which disappear at once when you confront them.

Eight seagulls flying north. A squishy frothy patch a few metres out from the rocks, near the Minda Dune.

See that dune, says my mum. It's supposed to be a fragile environment. It doesn't look too fragile to me. It's just a mess.

She decides to go back and find a seat to sit on. We two continue into the wind for the sake of good form.

We turn back after five minutes, re-passing the Minda Dune. We look at the sign, which says Fragile Environment. The dune is fifty metres long and is only there by accident. The accident of belonging to Minda Home. Everywhere else has been cleared and built on. It is probably too small to be sustainable

There is a photograph of the types of flowers to be found in the hollows of the dune. They are tiny delicate pink yellow and white. There are no actual flowers anywhere to be seen. Only stunted windswept bushes, gnarled roots and long strings of half dead grasses sticking out at unsustainable angles from the sand.

I stare at it until it becomes beautiful.