breathing deeply...

I am currently living overseas on the Channel Islands and have just downloaded some photos of my favourite beach, ever as I was feeling a little homesick, only to find out something that has made me physically sick.

I have grown up, like many others, with the beautiful Smiths Beach. Our parents used to take us there as little kids when we used to come down to Yallingup from Perth on holiday. I always said to myself I would move down there when I was old enough and before I started traveling the world I had been living in the Yallingup area for 8 years.

I have taken in countless strolls and sunsets along that beach, I have seen countless dolphins and surfed many glorious waves. It is the place I think about when life over here gets a bit tough, I just close my eyes and I am standing there looking north towards Yallingup, breathing deeply...

You see, it is still a place I visit even though I am thousands of miles away from it, I feel so connected to that place and have so many vivid memories of dawn sunrise surfs, that clean fresh feeling you have after coming out from a swim.

I used to walk along the beach on my days off with a plastic bag and pick up rubbish that ignorant people left behind because they don't have the mentality to understand what preservation means. They feel they can leave their bottles in the sand and their cigarette butts.

I used to treat Smiths Beach like it was my own living room. I cleaned it and looked after it. That is what you do when something provides you with so much.

Unfortunately, it seems that money is going to win the day again unless we all can come together and beat this monster. It saddens me to think that when I return home it will be as though our beautiful beach has been raped, I wish there was something I could do from this end of the globe.

I will be posting my submission.

Craig.

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