If you stand at any Adelaide beach and look across the sea you can (on a clear day) see the Yorke Peninsula and that's where Coobowie is. My Mum's best friend Marie's family have a shack there (think rustic cottage) and we used to go to Coobwie every summer - just the mum's and their children. (When we started there was just three children between them and by the time we finished there were eight.)
For a lot of summers the shack had no electricity just propane, no bathroom, just an outside toilet and it was mostly one room with beds divided off by small cupboards. We ate by lamplight, bathed in a metal baby bath and somebody had to empty the toilet when we left … and it's not as though the beach was the highlight - Coobowie is a gritty-shelly beach with lots of seaweed and long tides. I can't believe this was the highlight of my Mother's year!
The old shack a million years ago ... I didn't take any photos this time but trust me ... the view is about the same!
But it's 55 years since I first went and at least 30 since I was last there so we offered to take Mum over to meet up with Marie and Alan. There are two shacks now, and it's been so long that the new shack is now the old shack because the old shack has been spruced up. (The toilet is still outside but it's been spruced up to a flushing toilet and there is electricity - even internet!)
Greg their oldest son is over to help out - it's tough inside the shack: Marie has dementia, Alan is fighting cancer and my Mum is getting forgetful. We talk for hours and some of us remember the old times and most of us laugh and Joseph and I walk the 5kms into Edithburgh just like I used to do 50 years ago with Greg and his brother and the flies are still in our faces and on our backs, and it is still a hot walk . At Edithburgh, the concrete salt-water swimming pool on the beach is still there so we have a dip (it's cold!) and then it's an even hotter walk back! Greg and Alan go fishing together (for the last time?) and catch some King George Whiting and we eat it for supper except joseph who eats the razor fish (that aren't fish) that Greg collected and it's a grand meal!
The pool at Edithburgh
Teeing off at Edithburgh golf course!
The putting green tar!
Inspite of the spiders (I'm sure some were red backs - maybe even funnel-webs!) in the outside toilet and the gritty beach and the seaweed, the stars are amazing and I'm glad we went to Coobowie!
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