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A couple of weeks ago I was sitting eating blue cheese and drinking a nice red with my cousins in a bougie esplanade apartment at St Clair, writes Talia Marshall.
The waves were hitting the wall over the road over and over and seemed to almost smack me in the face with their nearness. I have not been out to St Clair, the gracious suburb by the sea, for a while and do not remember the sea being this close.
In the early ’90s there was still enough sand at St Clair beach to have teenage boys slicked with oil playing volleyball in the sun. There was enough room to run to the water past the mass of people lying on their towels. My crush was swimming in the surf with my friend Timo from church and I tried to impress him by emerging from each wave as elegantly as possible. My best friend snorted at me and told me I looked ridiculous.
For the 10 days of the year it is possible to go swimming outdoors in Dunedin without a wearing a wetsuit and catching hypothermia we made the most of it. This was our summer. Baywatch was popular and my friend plucked her eyebrows as thin as Pamela Anderson’s.
My mother was in the water during one of the shark attacks of the ’60s. I used to look at the shark bell near the old stairs down to the beach and wonder if the shark nets installed after the attacks really worked. Marine scientist Mike Barker is quoted in this newspaper saying the nets ‘‘do nothing except provide swimmers with an illusion of safety’’. Civilisation’s collective illusions are being eroded as much as that wall.
So much sand that was never meant to be there. Yes, climate change is responsible for those intimidating waves hitting the wall but, equally, when Pakeha settlers planned the city they could never have anticipated our bleak environmental future.
My adolescent summers at the beach seem more halcyon now that those days are numbered. Maybe St Clair will briefly be like the Riviera before we all fry and the waves finally have their way.
Cheery stuff!
One street back from the beach and the illusion of safety is restored. I used to go on walks with my nana from her house in Hargest Cres around the suburb and we’d stop and be nosy at the gardens and the blue mountain ceramics hiding behind the muslin curtains. We’d catch the bus to town and then back again, waiting for the bus in the Exchange with the beautiful destination on its front. St Clair always sounded slightly elevated to me.
We would often get off before our official stop so we could be nosy again on the way home. Especially the huge gingerbread mansion behind the brick wall near Leckie’s butchers. My mother spent so long as a little girl peering through the gate that the owner invited her in for a tour.
Every Sunday Grandad would drive us to the Mormon church up on the hill overlooking the city. We would pick up Mrs Leckie on the way, who seemed ancient to me and wore a fur coat and had curls set tight as lambswool. She smelled like face powder and benevolence. Mrs Leckie made my grandparents a tooled leather phonebook cover, which my nana still uses, even though phonebooks are nearly obsolete.
Clearly, I find it much easier to peer into the past than to properly consider the future or absorb the present. Mrs Leckie’s garden with all the roses beside the bus stop has been asphalted over now.
Timo, my friend from church, died earlier this year. And I found out the way everybody learns about death these days: on social media. He was a larger than life kind of character and now he is gone. One of the boys slicked with promise nudging a ball into the sun.
St Clair might be sort of posh but the beach was classless. Anyone could head out to St Clair for a swim and then brave the hot tar of the road for an ice cream from the dairy. This was before the esplanade was overrun with bougie eateries and apartments, and before I developed a palate for blue cheese. It was before the groyne started losing its wooden legs one by one to the sea.
Instead of the looming climate tsunami, I try to imagine a different future. The baby I had with my crush is 21 now. And one day he will take his own children to the beach where the sand stretches for miles, and the sun isn’t too brutal. I will be vigilant and make sure the new baby doesn’t put sand and whatever else they can get their chubby fists on into their silly mouth while their tired parents feel the brief freedom of the water. I will make sure the baby doesn’t take off their hat and is plastered in sunscreen.
When we get home there will be sand in everything, sand in the car, sand behind baby’s ears, sand in the leftover picnic, sand in the sheets. Summer will still be summer and not an inferno. It will last longer than 10 days.
The difference between a dream and an illusion is that a dream can still come true.