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I grew up on this once beautiful beach – collecting cowry shells with my toes at low tide.
My kindergarten was situated beneath the canopies of the coral trees and casuarina trees along the shore of Ela Beach.
The sensation of filtered sunlight through the branches of these trees remains with me to this day.
As does the whispy sound of the sea breeze through the casuarinas and so too the oddly pleasant salty and rotting smell of the low tide.
I was back there last week and it was so moving to re-experience these childhood sensations.
… If not Coral trees are they the Sea Almond that you referred to in a subsequent photo in this series?
It’s Sea Almond, Terminalia catappa.
It looks like I remember it from 1960 – that little wall and the beautiful trees. My brother went to the pre Kinder on the beach and I was across the road at Ela Beach Primary. We drove to school in a Land Rover every morning. I remember walking out on the reef at low tide and seeing all the sea cucumbers… decades later someone asked me if I had ever seen the Great Barrier Reef. It took me a while to reply “only from the other side”.