Back to Work at Eastbourne - Night 78

If, in a fit of literary flair, I were to assign some decidedly anthropomorphic qualities to the weather in Wellington, I would have to say she was a woman…and a difficult one at that. She changes moods so frequently here that between taking off and putting back on of coats, applying and reapplying sunscreen, and ducking out of the wind and scurrying to find sunshine, often little of the day is left for the task at hand. True, that last statement contained a certain degree of hyperbole, but the fact remains that Wellington in December is tricky place to plan a picnic.

Eastbourne Beach

We left the house amidst thick clouds around 9:30 -- sailing having been postponed again for another day -- and arrived at Eastbourne beach covered in sunlight and cooled with a light breeze. Almost immediately the clouds poured down from the range coating us with a brief downpour. The rain was whisked away by a fierce northwestern wind that blew across the harbor pelting us with cold, salty air. Through this ebb and flow of pleasureful sun and painful rain, we conducted a beach clean up operation. Armed with garbage bags, gloves, and steadfast miens, the GVN volunteers managed to comb over a mile of beachfront. The take of the day belonged to Ben, who found a nearly intact, two-foot tall Hindu statue of Lord Krishna and his sacred bovine. Among the other finds were an eclectic pair of pink sunglasses, 17 socks, a multitude of bottles and caps, a buried brick wall, Amatamilophin tablets and a dead sheep. Yes, I said a dead sheep. The best I could do was a half burned economics notebook and a Puff the Magic Dragon toy.

For lunch, Ray treated us to fish, chips, and

Kiwi Black Jack

a few games of cards at her witchlike castle on Eastbourne Bay (see Dec 10th for photo). In the afternoon we resumed our dune-weeding project from a few weeks ago. The drought conditions of November and early December had nearly pushed the spineflex to a breaking point, but with the last two weeks’ rain, much of it was coming back as strong as ever. Unfortunately, so were the weeds. Our local liaison, Marvin (or something like that) invited us back to his place for drinks after the work was done. His aged wife was shocked when I told her that I don’t ‘take’ tea or coffee. I’ve been in these ex-British colonies for nearly three months now and I am still amazed at the high regard with which the Queen’s loyal subjects hold their blessed tea times. It is as if they think the earth itself should stop rotating so they can sip a bit of scalding hot, poor tasting brown water every two to three hours.

What I Learned Today: All jokes and carrion aside, the sheer volume of plastic, in forms of straws, bottle caps and other unidentified pieces found lying on the beach is absolutely appalling. The worst part of it all is that, as Weisman points out in his book, The World Without Us, plastics don’t really decay as much as they break down into smaller and smaller pieces (as opposed to traditional chemical decay in which the molecules actually change composition), that are then consumed further on down the tropic cycle and thus contaminating all forms of life. It seems as if we are destined to poison ourselves to extinction, but instead of an instantaneous, massive nuclear holocaust, it’ll likely be through a small, elongated plasticized one.

written by

exumenius on December 27, 2007 from Wellington, New Zealand

from the travel blog: Kiwis and Kangaroos

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