I see dead things

I’ve joked to Husband that the youngest and I should be sharing the king-sized bed while on hols, so he can burn the midnight candle and snooze until 9am in a matching single with his sleep doppleganger (aka the 10-year-old).

Each morning, the 7-year-old and I rise before 6.30am and creep noisily around the apartment preparing for our early-morning beach walks together.

But yesterday she pulled the pin and curled up on the couch with my iPad instead … She needed a break from all the dead stuff.

While the sea is a ravishingly gorgeous thing, it’s also very much a circle of life. While we’ve marvelled over crabs darting into holes and molluscs poking their squishy bits out of shells, we’ve also discovered a wide variety of rotting corpses on our travels.

The most dramatic was a sea turtle on our first morning – huge and once majestic, reduced to a headless carcass on the sand.

It’s been followed by the fine bones and feathers of a sea bird and the eyeless corpse of a large fish.

Cue numerous shudders from the little one and grim retellings back at the holiday apartment.

So I was on my own yesterday, which had its own pleasures despite the joy I feel at the cheerful, endless chitterings and cartwheels of my youngest.

I swung my arms and took deep breaths of the fresh air, let the warm, soft waves curl around my toes and felt pleasure at being so peaceful.

I also discovered these funny little shells (below) that remind me of the ones you see fossilized in rocks so often. I souvenired them to show the kids, who were appropriately awed.

PS a question for any scientists out there … What’s with all the pumice on the northern NSW beaches … Which volcano spewed them? The youngest is taking bags of the stuff back home for “news” at school and I’d love a story for her to add to them.