Samphire Part One

Today I'm going to take you on a walk, through the Onkaparinga River Recreation Park, at Port Noarlunga.

We'll start at the carpark in front of the playground with the wooden castle, and the picnicking families eating their lunch. Behind us is Saltfleet Street, the Onkaparinga River, the sand dunes and the sea, but we're not going that way. No. It's too windy.

We're going to the northern end of the playground, over the grass, to Britain Drive, along Britain Drive, past cliffs bristling with dying aloes, below clifftop houses that look rather new. Britain Drive ends in a football oval, at the entrance to which is a sentry box and a dusty blue chair.

We'll cross the oval and walk to a break in the fence on the far side where a sign will warn us not to think of swimming in the water. We will not have been thinking of it. Particularly as we have just passed a sign warning us that asbestos might be there.

We find some wooden steps leading down to the mudflats, and a trail leading south through the wetlands. Down the steps, banked with yellow soursobs. Today we shall call them oxalis. No we shan't, that's a bit too pretentious.

The mudflats are covered with the green, brown and red-tipped succulent you don't know the name of. Neither do I. It's repellant and beautiful at the same time. The estuaries glint like flat sardine tin lids. There are not many birds and two of them are seagulls. Do you agree that if you take off your sunglasses it looks more colourful here? A richness of orange, purple and black that you hadn't noticed when you had them on?

The trail we're following is narrow. Damp mud drying into curled up squares of clay. Grey, and sloppy in parts. Let's go off to the right a bit, to slightly higher ground, where the soursobs are.

What are these bushes? Don't you know, either? They're broken, tight and scratchy, half dead, or all dead. Angry-faced black gumnuts on a dead branch. Crispy curly brown seed pods under crispy curly leaves. Gum trees. Gum trees. And yet it doesn't look bad.

Where's the river? There. We're just coming up to it. Its wide here, and flowing backwards. On the other side are people fishing. Look at our little trail now. It's as wide as a human foot, with green and yellow oxalis knee high on both sides.

I'm going to leave you now. Just wait here, I'll be back in 24 hours. It won't seem like that to you though. And when I return, I'll know the names of some of those bushes and trees.