Feb 16 – Surprise Sunrise Sandbar Walk
During yesterday’s lunch at Wise winery, my longtime friend Andrew, a marathon runner who runs on the Dunsborough beach every morning before breakfast, invited us to join him for a sunrise jaunt (walk, not run!) on the long sandbar.
He also said he would lend us their family bikes for another ride along the beach if we wanted to do it later on. So Elizabeth would have a chance to get over any lingering bike phobia from her Perth experiences two days ago.
We didn’t promise anything. Neither of us are normally early risers. But my mental alarm must have been set. Because on Monday morning, surprisingly, I awakened at 5 AM. The dawn was just breaking out.
I had asked Elizabeth before we went to sleep last night if she wanted me to wake her. She said she did. So after I cleaned up, got dressed and made myself a cup of coffee, I roused her out of bed, too. By 5:40 AM, we were already driving down to Dunsborough from the ridge where our Blackboy cottage is located.
We got to the beach just in time. The sun was starting to peak on the horizon above the ocean. I snapped some pictures, then took my shoes off and walked over to the sandbar. Normally, the sandbar is submerged in water. But at low tide, like right now, you can walk to it barely getting your shorts wet.
The water was freezing cold though. But the beauty of the moment made me impervious to physical hardships.
I spent the next 15 minutes or so walking on the sandbar and snapping pictures. I called to Elizabeth to join me but she preferred to stay dry and walk on the shore. Eventually we met up at the end of the sandbar.
Here’s now a pictorial story of the Dunsborough beach sandbar sunrise walk…
Interestingly, we never actually met on the sandbar our friend Andrew, the marathoner, who inspired us to do this sunrise walk. He was out there, though, we found out later. But when we circled around from the sandbar back to shore, he was running in the opposite direction on the sandbar. So we just missed each other by a few hundred yards.
Blackboy Hula Dancers
Back home at our cottage, after breakfast we went out for a short walk through the bush. I wanted to show Elizabeth why the Blackboy bush was now called a Grasstree. Because when these trees are young, like this one next to which Elizabeth is doing hula, they look like Polynesian girls wearing a grass skirt. Just like the Hawaiian hula dancers. Of which Elizabeth is one.
So I added the extra dancers to the original shot in the right picture. 🙂 The photo of the two us wearing the original Hawaiian costumes was taken on the Big Island in July 2011.
Bike Ride Along the Same Beach
We returned to Dunsborough around noon, and went to Andrew and Lindsay’s home to borrow the bikes. After some adjustments for the height of Elizabeth’s bike seat, we realized that she really needs a smaller bike. So all three of us went to a local bike shop.
You can see Elizabeth above jus before we took off for a phobia-removing bike ride along Dunsborough beach. Everything went well.
On our way back, we stopped for this midday shot of the sandbar, now under water, that we walked on at dawn.
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