The Seawall at Glenelg Beach | Embedded Memories
Pa was a prisoner in Changi. He wasn’t my Pa, but I knew him as Pa. He had driven 400kms from Adelaide down to the country to pick up his grandson and me to take us back to the city for a summer holiday at Glenelg Beach. Never having been to the city without my parents, it was my first big adventure and the anticipation was wonderful.
It was December and it was very hot, forty degrees for seven days straight.
As we drove through the Adelaide Hills and down around the Devil’s Elbow, the old Holden’s brakes began to give off the thick, acrid odour of overheating brake fluid. Pa shifted the three-on-the-tree gear lever back to second gear and slowed the cars speed just by using engine braking. For the rest of our journey his feet hardly touched the brakes. It was so hot at night it was hard to sleep. The city absorbed the heat into its streets and cement during the day. At night it slowly let it back out, keeping the temperature high. The house had no air conditioning and we sweltered in our beds.
We went to Glenelg Beach on the rickety wooden tram
Pa taught me to cook rice, by the absorption method, as he had learnt as a prisoner of war. He let us catch the tram ‘down to the bay’. Two young country teenagers finding their way around the big smoke. So we went to Glenelg Beach on the rickety wooden tram and spent the afternoon people watching. Our legs stuck with sweat to the red leather seats as we bumped along the tracks.
I wore a t-shirt, shorts and thongs, with no hat, sunglasses or sunscreen. The “slip/slop/slap” ads hadn’t begun on TV yet. It was several years before Australia became Sun Smart and being the 70’s no one worried too much. Usual summer holidays were pretty much jetty jumping at Beachport. Smothered in baby oil to improve our tans. All it improved was the thickness of the layers of skin that would peel off after getting sunburnt. My cousins and our summer girlfriends would help each other peel. Pulling flaking layers of skin off each other’s shoulders and backs, like layers of onion skin. The raw red patches hurt no matter how much cold tea or butter was applied by our well meaning parents.
At Glenelg Beach, we sat on the long stone seawall
I watched an Indian lady with beautiful long, long black hair come out of the sea and walk across the sand to rinse off under the outdoor shower a short distance from our observation point.
I’d never seen an outdoor shower before, or an Indian woman with long, long hair. She stood under the shower and the fresh water ran over her. She rinsed her hair again and again, then wrung it out and twirled it all around into a long straight shining strand and tied it in a knot on top with no band or clips and walked away.
“You know those moments in time that are forever embedded in your memory and they play like a movie running when you think of them. This was one of those moments.“
Five years old and just starting school. I had a reader that was my favourite book about a young Indian girl with long hair and a dot on her forehead and a pet cheetah. I so wanted to look like this girl but I was blonder than blonde and fairer than fair and I remember having the greatest fear that no one would like me because I wasn’t dark haired and dark skinned.
Back at the beach, as the evening breeze arrived and we watched the sun set, our bare young legs scratched against the warm rough rocks of the seawall.
All these years later, Finchy and I visit Glenelg Beach often and stay at the Seawall Apartments. We walk along the foreshore, take photos or sit and people watch. I rest my hand on that same warm stone seawall and see in my mind the lady with the long hair and feel the memory of being young and fancy free with my friends. Embedded memories.
