Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park
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Walkers and cyclists doing the path section of Sydney Olympic Park that stretches from Bennelong Speedway (oops! I mean Parkway) to the Badu Mangroves that guard the northern edge of Bicentennial Park would be familiar with the sight of half-a-dozen or so shipwrecks sitting calmly in the waters of Homebush Bay.
🔺 HMAS Karangi: once an important contributor in the defence of Darwin against the Japanese attack, now decomposing incrementallyin the bay
🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”
ჱჲს A metal plaque on the ground alongside the trail directs the curious passerby to an old wooden viewing platform where you can observe these maritime relics redolent of rotting timber and rusting metal. This spot contains the ship-breaking ramp (or what remains of it) that was used to dismember these ex-naval vessels. Missing is the wooden crane (presumably submerged) and the telescope.
🔺 The ship-breaking dock
ჱჲს The story of how these ships ended up here begins in 1966 when the Maritime Services Board approved the use of land here as a ship-breaking yard for the Port of Sydney. From 1970 till to the early Nineties private companies leased the yard to demolish hulks which had surpassed their use-by-date.
ჱჲს With the passage of time, left to nature and the elements, a number of these ex-ships have experienced an almost complete organic makeover. The dense mangroves of the bay have invaded the vessels, turning them into what one observer described as “a floating mangrove forest” (May Ly) and another, “a floating rusty relic forest” (Ruth Spitzer). The stricken and abandoned vessels are now a haven for local coastal birdlife (at dusk the hovering and nesting white gulls are easy to spot aboard the arboreal hulls).
ჱჲს The most striking example of this process of afforestation of wrecks is the SS Ayrfield. The UK-built steam collier, which ended up in Homebush Bay in 1972 after World War 2 service, is spectacularly overgrown with mangroves, a dense armada of trees literally bursting out of the ship’s disappearing hull and threatening to swallow it whole! High-rise residents in the Wentworth Point estate and people strolling along the waterfront of the Point are afforded the best views of the organically-refashioned Ayrfield.
ჱჲს Also warranting special mention for a similar makeover courtesy of its biotic vibrancy–albeit much more obscurely located around the bend close to the Waterbird Sanctuary–is the 1924-built SS Heroic. The Heroic, a steam tug boat, saw service in both world wars before being consigned to the Homebush Bay cast-iron graveyard. Hidden behind a cloak of thick mangroves, you need to position yourself right on the muddy edge of the water and crane your neck to get a decent sighter of the nature-engulfed old tug boat. Its predicament, mirrors the Ayrfield’s but in a less advanced stage of arboreal encroachment.
ነሃጣፈነ A curious footnote to the 50 year-presence of the scuttled and abandoned ships in Homebush Bay is that the vessels, despite the egregiously bad state they are in, are ‘protected’ by legislation (under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976).
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Materials referenced:
‘Shipwrecks of Homebush Bay’, (May Ly), 30-Jul-2013, www.weekendnotes.com
‘Graveyards of a different kind at Homebush Bay’, (Ruth Spitzer), 2015, www.ruthspitzer.com
Our last day at Mérida was more or less entirely given over to exploring a local geological feature in the region that Yucatán is world-famous for – the cénote✳ (Pron: say-NO-tay). Cénotes are natural pits, large sinkholes in the ground formed when limestone bedrock on the surface collapses exposing groundwater underneath. The ones we visited on that day were subterranean, deep down below ground level in cave formations in sites sheltered by overhanging cliff-faces. The cénotes in Southern Mexico are very popular with divers and snorkellers and the more accessible ones usually require the payment of an entry fee (from about 50 to 100 Pesos each). To get into the water at many cénotes you need to make a steep descent on rickety old ladders, although not all cenotes are sunk deep into the earth’s surface…some other cénotes like the one we saw in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba are located just below the ground and just look like natural pools surrounded by worryingly jagged rocky ledges.
Guía José conducts a cartography class in the field!
It was a decent old drive to reach our first Yucatán cénote, it was located in a place called Tecoh, quite remote, dry-parched and harsh land, real sagebrush territory! Our sociable guide for the day, José, laid down a map of the Peninsula on the ground and explained a bit of the cénote story. The ancient Maya people apparently used the cénotes for both practical and religious purposes. In a landscape (Yucatán) with hardly any rivers to speak of and quite few lakes, the cénotes provided a much-needed source of fresh water. The Maya also used them, it is believed, for sacrificial offerings sometimes. José’s finger traced a circuitous line around much of the map, pointing out the location of cénotes which seemed to be dotted all over the place. After we had swam in the first cénote I asked José who clearly relished the whole cénote experience if he had swam in every cenote in the state. José chuckled and indicated that there was over 2,000 cénotes all over the Peninsula, and he might need another 20-30 years to reach that target!◊
The roof of something deep, dark & delightful…
Cénote Dive-and-Snorkle
The ladder going down to the water-level was a concentric spiralling contraption of wooden steps which were in far from mint condition (words like flimsy and haphazard come to mind), necessitating that we made sure we trod fairly cautiously on each rung. At the bottom was a pretty primitively constructed wooden platform with only a small recess in the wall of the cave where we crammed our clothes and bags into every possible crevice.
Being a hesitant auto-immerser in any deposit of water greater in scope than a domestic bathtub, an aquatic prevaricator who can hold his own and delay with the best of them, I coaxed and eased myself with glacial speed into the seemingly bottomless, blue-turquoise chasm. The water was a little cool at first but I soon accustomed to it. The water quality looked pristine despite it being in constant by visitors, I was attracted by the appearance of a myriad of tiny colourful fish visibly close to the surface. The pool looked very deep…José speculated at least forty metres deep. Above us small birds flitted around the cave, dipping and diving in and out of several holes in the roof that have formed over the millenniums. The light emanating from the holes through tufts of vegetation provided a kind of natural spotlight projecting on to the water, giving the entire cavern a magical glow.
The beautiful azure water!
After a half-hour or so’s frolicking in the cénote Jose coaxed us out with the promise of a visit to an even more spectacular cénote that was only a short distance away at Carretera tecoh-telchaquillo. To get to the second cénote site we had to travel on more bumpy dirt roads, passing through several gates taking us onto different land-holdings. As we approached each closed gate, two small chicos (boys) that José had brought on the trip, would alight on a signal from the driver and scamper up and open the gate for the mini-bus◘.
Aquanauts of an ancient cénote!
An idyllic natural swimming hole full of picturesque delights
Cénote número dos managed to meet the high expectations of Jose’s extravagant rhetoric, and then some! It was a wider, deeper cave and the pool had a considerably more expansive mass of water. When we got to the cliff overlooking the cénote there was already a quartet of scuba-divers equipped with underwater cameras foraging around below the surface (“Japanese tourists”, they looked like to me). The drop from the top to the base platform was longer than the first cénote but glad to say the ladder was in better state with one long, straight descent to a three-quarter way platform and then a shorter ladder to a lower platform where you enter the water. José as usual wasted no time in shedding his T-shirt and thongs and diving into the sparkling abyss, following swiftly by the two boys. With everyone else quickly into the water, I paused briefly to take a few shots of the vast cavern and its water-treading occupants, before doing likewise. The pool was many metres deep (hence the presence of the scuba-divers), so once in I treaded water for a bit before swimming out to the middle of the water where someone had helpfully anchored a red buoy to the bedrock floor.
With one arm securely clasping the floatation device I took a breather, and while I was there I was able to have a good look around the cavern roof above. Bright beams of light from the limestone roof illuminated the water surface like a spotlight and made it possible to make out the presence of a few hibernating Mexican bats suspended from various nooks and niches of the craggy rock. Our guide pointed out that the walls of the cave accommodated a host of other small creatures like iguanas and spiders. I liked how there were lots of long, long vines growing over the edge of the cliff and cascading down almost to the water✥…the vines looked sturdy but I wondered if they were strong enough for any daredevil adventurer brave (or stupid) enough to swing off them from the roof into the water?
A gate-opening chico & the word of Señor Jesuchristo
Community lunch with the family
The fee for the cénotes excursion included lunch in the casa of a local family that José took us to in nearby Pixyá. When we got there the niños were still hanging round so I wondered if this was José’s lugar. A number of the humble dwellings on that street had the identical message in Spanish painted on the front walls – a quote from Señor Jesuchristo (Ro. 6:23), something about paying fish when you die in order to ensure eternal life (my idiomatic interpretation anyway!).
A typical Yucatán Sunday spread!
As small livestock wandered around the yard inquisitively, we were guided to our seats at a long, outdoor table under a covered awning. José and the dama of the house brought out the food, in no time we were tucking into a delicious meal of meats (mainly pollo) and a smorgasbord of vegetable dishes. José produced jugs of a home-made lemon or limonáda drink to compliment the midday meal. The authentic, community “Sunday lunch” with the family capped off the day of subterranean cénote adventures to a tee!
Setting out again from Pixyá in José’s mini-bus, we bounced along the dusty dirt road towards Mérida, the further we went the better, and therefore the smoother, the road surface got. Back in town, having developed a craving for hot choc drinks after some early disappointing coffee experiences on the tour, I sought out a late afternoon caliente chocolate at the Italian Coffee Company (this seems to be a sizeable franchise business chain in different parts of Mexico, noticed they had several shops around where we stayed in Puebla).
Being our last night in Mérida, Hector took us to one of the liveliest and most crowded nightspots he knew in Mérida City Centre, Le Negrita Cantina (corner of Calles 49 and 62). We got a sensory dose of typically pulsating Mérida night-life here…wall-to-wall people seated cramped close together munching burritos (my non-appearing cerveza seemed to have been redirected back to the brewery – in a nearby town!) in an enclosed firetrap, wait-staff constantly circling round the tables with trays of margaritas, sangritas and micheladas looking for homes. Couldn’t really hear ourselves speak with the din going on, but the exciting buzz of the non-stop musical band and the dancing was great to experience!
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✳ the word derives from ts’onot, used by the low-land Yucatec Maya to refer to any location with accessible groundwater ◊ possibly José was being conservative with even that formidable number – other estimates (eg, www.aquaworld.com.mx) place the number of cénotes in the Yucatán Pen at in excess of 5,000
◘ the two small children doing the leg-work, I presumed, were José’s own niños
✥ some of the hanging vines in cénotes resemble the icicle-like stalactites often seen in caves
Bêifāng Hâitān Cháng-chéng 長城 Collaroy-Narrabeen’s Great Wall of Sand!
Collaroy-Narrabeen’s 長城Sth Narrabeen Surf Club peering over the Wall of Sand!
The photos (L + R) taken five days ago show the cumulative effects of successive series of storms on the one kilometre plus stretch of coast where Collaroy Beach merges seamlessly with South Narrabeen Beach. The foredune in the pictures (the high ridge of sand) was created from countless poundings by severe storms over the last 100 years, but the gouging out of a phenomenally large quantity of sand to create the current steepness of the ridge owes itself to the most recent destructive event, a massive storm action which relentlessly blitzed the narrow beachfront at Collaroy and Narrabeen in June 2016. For three days huge waves and king tides pummelled the beach, the cost in landform terms was the lost of an estimated 50 metres of beach on what was already a precariously thin strip of coast [M Levy, A Benny-Morrison, D Dumas, ‘Sydney storm: erosion swallows 50 metres of Collaroy, Narabeen beaches’, Sydney Morning Herald, 07-Jun-2016, www.smh.com.au].
Just one sample of the damage to Collaroy Beach & property in 2016
The damage to coastal infrastructure last year was extensive – back fences, balconies, sunrooms, whole backyards and most spectacularly in-ground swimming pools were uprooted – but came as no surprise to locals, coastal geologists or environmentalists. The beach here has had numerous precedents over the years (such as 1913-14, 1920, 1944, 1945, 1967, 1974, 1978, 1986, 1995, 2007), and has been witness to the undermining of foundations, damage to clubhouses, the washing away of houses and the demolition of some homes. The storm havoc in 1967 undermined the foundations of the (then) recently built, high-rise Flight Deck apartment block [J Morcombe, ‘Collaroy beachfront has been an erosion hotspot for a hundred years’, Manly Daily, 07-Jun-2016].
Urban development and sand bank vulnerability The present predicament of waves swallowing up beachfront properties had its genesis in the early 1900s when people, attracted by the sea and the views, started constructing their houses on Pittwater Road on the edges of the beach. Solutions to the ongoing onslaught from nature of storms was from the start consistently ad hoc. In the 1920 “Great Storm” locals desperately tried to shore up their beachfront cottages with sandbags✧. Warringah Council’s response to each new threat was largely reactive rather than proactive. The frequency of recurrence clearly called for preventative measures…one of the few early attempts by Council to pre-empt the threat was its purchase and demolition of storm-damaged houses between Arlington Amusement Hall and Jenkins Street, to be replaced by a public reserve.
Flight Deck too close to ground turbulence!
By the early 1960s Council’s planning scheme had polarised the community. The Collaroy-South Narrabeen Progress Association lobbied Council to halt its policy of building flats and resume as many houses as possible along the beachfront, demolishing them to create open space. This prompted an opposition group to spring up, demanding that more flats be constructed on the beach edge. This division was mirrored within Warringah Council itself, Councillors were split, some were in favour of increasing the number of flats, some were opposed to the development. A compromise was reached in 1964 which still permitted construction of flats and houses on the fragile edge of the sand bank [J Morcombe, ‘Milestone for Collaroy’s landmark Flight Deck’, Manly Daily, 12-Feb-2016]. Beach erosion and reinforcement measures More storms in the eighties and nineties prompted Council to try to come up with better thought-out strategies to cope with the burgeoning threat. Earlier construction of rock walls had been haphazard. In 2002 it opted to construct a 1.1km long sea wall along the most pregnable part of the Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach❖. The plan was shelved after several thousand people staged a beach protest against the proposed sea wall.
Again public opinion has been divided – many different views have been voiced on the issue…from those whose properties would not be protected by the wall or by individual walls covering single properties (eg, water can be pushed on to other neighbouring properties which don’t have a sea wall – sometimes because they were denied approval by Council to build one!). Who bears the cost is another issue – coastal engineer Angus Gordon has raised the thorny prospect of “councils building walls using public money to protect private property” (current Northern Beaches Council policy dictates that individual homeowners must pay for the construction of an approved wall for their properties). Beach-goers too, tend to have a differing perspective to those of beachfront homeowners, many surfers point to the way changes to the nature of the beach can affect the wave patterns and thus the quality of surfing (altering the breaks, etc) [C Chang, ‘Bitter battle over Collaroy beachfront has raged for years’, (News) 07-Jun-2016, www.news.com.au
‘Flight Deck’
Given the alarming extent of beach erosion gorged out of Collaroy and South Narrabeen beaches, supplementing the lost sand is vital. Northern Beaches Council tackles what it calls “Sand Replenishment and Beach Nourishment” by sourcing sand from local building sites, and it is also “dredged periodically from the entrance of Narrabeen Lagoon … to replenish Collaroy-Narrabeen Beach” [‘Coastal erosion’, (Northern Beaches Council), www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/.] One of the concerns about using building site materials is the issue of ensuring clean fill…rubbish, waste matter or other, undesirable pollutants may inadvertently end up in the bolstering mix on the beach (risk of litter and impurities, aesthetic considerations).
Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach is considered to be Australia’s third most at-risk area¤ when it comes to the deleterious effects of coastal processes. Thus maintenance of sand bank stability remains a crucial civic objective against a backdrop of rising seas and unpredictable and extreme weather patterns. This is also an extremely costly matter for both Council and the state Liberal government. In 2013 Waringah Council forked out almost $3M to acquire a (potentially endangered?) luxury beachfront property to demolish it and use the land for a public park, and the troubled beach will figure significantly in the allocation of the $69M the state government announced for councils to address beach erosion, coastal inundation and cliff instability [Chang, op.cit.]
Collaroy Beach dune reinforcement
Endnote: Longshore drift, an agent of beach erosion A beach is inherently dynamic, motion and change are constant factors in its composition. Lateral movement of sediment (sand, clay, silt and shingle) along the shoreline is known as Longshore drift (or sometimes called Littoral drift). The geological process occurs thus – the prevailing wind powers the waves, directing them towards the coast. When they hit the surf zone they break at an angle to the shoreline (oblique wave action). Sand and other sediments are propelled along the surf zone in a zig-zagging motion, the swash (onshore-rushing water moves the beach materials along), followed by a corresponding backwash (the water returns offshore – if the wave is constructive, it will do so with reduced energy)[‘Longshore Drift’, (Revision World), www.revisionworld.com]
See related post King Canute Battling the Relentless Tide*: The Dilemma of Rampant Beach Erosion – Gold Coast and Adelaide (Nov. 2017)(Cartoon: Clive Goddard)
﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋ * The title is of course a symbolic nod to King Canute (Cnut the Great) 11th century Anglo-Saxon ruler of the North Sea Empire, and the apocryphal anecdote of his futile but persistent efforts to turn back the tide on the seashore ✧ sand-bagging’s value is as an immediate response to flooding and is considered ineffective in countering sand erosion ❖ Council had earlier erected groynes (low walls or sturdy timber barrier) on the beach which had become largely ineffective over time ¤ after the Gold Coast and Adelaide’s north-western suburban beaches
Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park
🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”
Aquanauts of an ancient cénote!
