On a recent weekend to I visited Millers Point. Just around the corner from Rumbly Bay there is a tidal swimming pool that juts out into the sea. The pool is located between those giant grey boulders that are so familiar to the area around Millers Point and towards Smitswinkel Bay.
I was walking with my brother Clinton from the slipway across to Rumbly Bay slipway a few years back when we passed this swimming pool. My brother reminded me that several years ago when I had left school and had started working I used to drive up to Millers Point in the summer and come to the same spot to catch white stumpnose fish. In late November and early December I would catch small worms from the rocks and then come in the evening and use light tackle including a thin rod with light line and a small spinning reel to throw our bait to catch the white stumpnose.
The picture that my brother painted for me of those times many years ago reminded me then when I had a yellow Austin car that looked terrible but was light on fuel and cost me next to nothing to buy second-hand. The car probably wasn’t second-hand but third or fourth hand.
But what surprised me was being taken back to a time that I had completely forgotten about. It was amazing to me that something that I had enjoyed so much in my early 20s I had forgotten about. It’s strange also that I have never again fished on the rocks at Millers Point, nor my favourite spot off Kalk Bay just down the side from Woolley’s Pool where there is a reef and a gully that used to yield me catches of Dassies (Black Tail), Wildeperd (Zebra Fish) and Strepies (Karanteen or sarpa salpa).
The other thing that I remember from those times was my desire to draw with pen or pencil – sketches of the sea, fishing boats, lighthouses and seabirds. It’s only now after many, many years that I have taken up drawing because I have a chance to do it. I’ve only been to a few lessons on Saturday mornings but really enjoy it. It seems like a part of myself that had been lost for so many years has been recovered. I am able to reach through the mists of time to a part of myself that I had forgotten about.
In these times when dinner tables and after dinner talks are surrounded with the talk of gloom and doom … about the economy and the way things are headed and during the day time when people are visibly stressed by all their extra work they are putting in just to hold their heads above water … during these economic times, it’s important to not lose sight of the things that we once loved. These are the things that make us who we are, help provide us with a deep source of inner satisfaction and, most importantly, give us hope that we can through our own efforts create a better future for ourselves.
