by Peter Tyldesley
We could hear the waves and smell the beach from our house in Cromer Road. So I suppose it was just a matter of time before I walked to Surfer’s Corner to explore the rock pools. My father had allowed me to fish the vlei all the way to the mouth, because he knew where to look for me if I wasn’t home on time. But I was under strict instruction not to wander off course. There were no GPS’s in those days and you did not need one. There was a strap hanging behind the bedroom door which had the most amazing telepathic capacity to guide you home via the shortest route and within milliseconds of the cut-off time.
I had befriended Malcolm, who had replaced Klasie, and one Saturday morning when my father was working overtime, Malcolm popped around and suggested we wander down to the beach. I told my mom that Malcolm and I were going to walk to the mouth of the vlei, and she raised an eyebrow, looked at me sternly and said : “OK, but don’t go anywhere else, and make sure you get home before your father.” Mothers seem to know what you’re going to be thinking next week Wednesday. Anyway off we went.
We hit the beach where the bathing boxes were, and it was spring low tide. The sand flats exposed by the receding waves were littered with an assortment of mussel shells. One particularly large brown shell with a rough scalloped exterior caught my attention and I picked it up and took it home for identification. It turned out to be a horse mussel which has a particularly interesting and somewhat incestuous symbiotic relationship with a small round crab. Photo Zandvlei Trust
But it was the rockpools that caught my attention. The shallow pools were full of large grey bullhead gobies and green klipfish. Clusters of sand anemones grouped together in sandy areas where there was a strong waterflow during high tide. They can survive being covered in sand for fairly lengthy periods. In the more sheltered corners purple, red and pink urchins gathered over small beds of green algae, and rock crevices sheltered several species of chitons, whose ancestry precedes the dinosaurs. Many of the pools which were located higher up on the beach were filled to capacity with black mussel shells. The same shells that the Dutch burned in lime kilns to make the cement which still holds the stone walls of the Castle together.
But the real magic appeared when you poked your head in under one of the larger rocks which was only exposed at spring low tide. A kaleidoscope of colour. Feather duster worms, bright orange sponges, plum anemones, sea stars, squirting redbait – an incredible diversity of species. You could easily spend half an hour crouched under one of those rocks, in absolute wonder. But the ocean is full of tricks. The long, suckered tentacles of an octopus arm exploring the inside of your leg will bring you back to earth in a flash!
On the way home we walked down Clevedon road and on the corner with Albertyn Road there used to be a large manatoka hedge, behind which was an empty plot. There was a very large Cape skink lying there in the sun. Malcolm threw a stone at it and it disappeared under the manatoka. When my father arrived home he asked me where I had been, and I confessed that I had been to the beach. Because I was honest and because I had gone with Malcolm, Dad did not get angry, but told me he wanted to know whenever I went and who I was going with. Then I told him about the skink, and he did get angry. “Why do you want to kill everything?”
That afternoon, after the customary muscadels, my father and I walked down to the large Rooikrans bush which provide shelter for a number of Cape skinks. In a howling Southeaster he got down on his hands and knees slowly crawling around the bush hoping to surprise a dozing skink. I thought that I would stalk the skinks from the other side of the bush. Just as dad was about to pounce, I appeared from the opposite side. The skink saw me and dashed off. Dad looked up at me and there was murder in his eyes. He never said anything, but I knew what he was thinking!
We sat back and waited a bit. Those skinks had become used to people walking past the rooikrans bush, and it didn’t take them long to appear again and settle in to some sunbathing. Dad got down again and this time I let him do it on his own. He was quick off the mark and I wasn’t too sure that I could outlast him if I accidently awakened the skink he was targeting. Not too long and he had one. The poor skink got such a fright that he dropped a turd and his tail at the same moment. The tail lay trashing on the sand for a while. Dropping its tail was a clever party trick to distract evil-eyed predators while the skink made a quick getaway.
My father then proceded to show me the skink and explained that it was not poisonous – he let it bite his finger – and informed me that there were no poisonous lizards in South Africa. He pointed out the eyelids which enabled the skinks to close their eyes and doze off. Our marbled leaf-toed geckos on the other hand don’t have eyelids. Their eyes are protected by a firm clear scale which they have to lick with their tongues to keep clean. He let me hold it and then told me to release it. If any more of its tail fell off it would not have the balance to run away in a straight line.
I lowered the skink gently and watched in wonder as it zigzagged off into the rooikrans bush.
At supper that night my mother informed us that we were going to move to Lakeside. Her offer for 42 Orient Road Lakeside had been accepted.
That session with my father had piqued my interest in reptiles. An interest which was about to explode into a fanatical lifelong passion.
