An ode to Myponga Beach
In our September newsletter, we ran a giveaway for Ivor Hele and asked entrants to tell us about their favourite holiday destination. We just had to share this amazing response sprinkled with historic family photos from our prize winner, Meg.
A place where I have spent many wonderful holidays is Myponga Beach on the Fleurieu Peninsula. It’s a beautiful blend of rural ‘Southern Mount Lofty’ landscapes along with a crescent bay which can be so calm and benign at times, yet thrilling in its energy when the winds and tides change. As a child I walked to the nearby farm to buy milk, cream and eggs. We were “in another world” yet able to look across the sea to the twinkling lights of Aldinga – now much more extended – and the peaks of Mount Lofty. How privileged we were!
There is a long family history from my great grandparents’ time down there; many photographs; and it is the place where I first gained a childhood awareness of the aboriginal culture – artefacts having been found in the sandhills which were once a burial ground.
Historic Myponga Beach. Photo supplied by Meg.
A rollick in the sandhills. Family photo supplied by Meg.
There is a long family history from my great grandparents’ time down there; many photographs; and it is the place where I first gained a childhood awareness of the Aboriginal culture – artefacts having been found in the sandhills which were once a burial ground. We were furious to arrive one school holiday to see bulldozers removing large areas of the sandhills to bed down the pipeline from the Myponga Reservoir which had begun to snake its way across the hills. Now there is a reclamation process in place for the sandhills, though they are nothing like the height and vegetation that we played in as children. There have also been efforts to protect rare nesting birds on the sand too, which is good to see.
The Myponga River. Photo supplied by Meg.
The river which is dammed to form the Myponga Reservoir, still flows in to the sea at Myponga Beach being fed by springs below the dam wall. My grandfather used to say that it is the only true river with its source and mouth in South Australia – other watercourses technically being creeks that dry up at times, or not within our State entirely. I don’t know if he was correct in this claim but the story added to the mystery and power of the natural environment for me. He loved the place so much that he wanted his ashes scattered at the river mouth there, which the family did for him. So, it’s been a special place for me on various levels for all of my life ... a place for hiking, swimming, canoeing, surfing and also for solitude, writing poetry, reading, absorbing the environment, reflecting on Aboriginal and more recent histories ... as my mother used to say, “just cogitating”!
Meg's great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle at Myponga River. Photo supplied by Meg.
Although it has changed now with regard to beach houses and so on, Myponga Beach still has a powerful sense of place and a myriad of memories for me – and the impact of nature, climate, the seasons and the vistas of our southern land can still evoke a wonderful spiritual and physical environment: not so much “getting away from it all” but rather, “getting in to it all”!
A well-deserved win, in our opinion. What do you think?
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