Emu Point: Bairn of the shallows

Emu Point: Bairn of the shallows

When the high tide falls and runs, hardly noticed, all of it so gentle, with hardly a ripple – the mud flats rest from their movement – except here and there are the domain of long-snouted snails who drift carefree in their guilds – fluting, slipping, sliding as lorries do in peak hour, bumper to bumper with periwinkle and bubbling half-submerged scallop shells, stopping only for streamlined whitebait and whiting.

In this place with mud under her feet, ankle deep mud-skipper, my blond-haired bairn goes careering, sailing past me. And in the blink of an eye my father is twirling his fishing line in giant arcs with his bait-laden hook and sinker, for then I was his blond-haired bairn and he the would be fisher-man, and as I watched him swing and arc his line and bait, so too had a wandering seabird above his head reassigned its fate.

This place of dreams and micro-observations moves as if in slow motion, and speaks with surreal memories of snails underfoot, and of giant-billed pelicans, of preening and dancing gulls and the movement of tides running beyond the bar and returning to the shoreline. This place where my daughter danced and my father caught a gull, this place where some of life’s most poignant moments have cast their spell.