The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

There’s a lot of different kinds of rock in the world, the vast majority of which, I’m sure, I know nothing about. My understanding of rock formation and geology is basic and rudimentary and couldn’t begin to touch at a comprehensive overview. I know that some rocks are sedimentary, where sand and gravel and similar material has been deposited somewhere over untold eons, in beds of rivers, or lakes or seas, and after layer upon layer of this has been put down it is then compressed, somehow, maybe by its own weight, maybe by other layers of rock lifting themselves up and folding themselves over it, or cliffs caving in and mountains collapsing and falling down on top of it. This gives sandstone and similar things. It typically shows shelving layers of rock, parallel running fragments of long shards, in which often fossils can be found: fossilised ripples of an ancient seabed, or the skeleton of a marine animal squashed flat, or imprints of seashells, sometimes occurring high on top...

It’s the very early morning the fog is lifting off the sea the sand of the beach is wet and the waves are singing as they crash onto the shore I run down the length of the beach between the dunes and the salt water and the fog envelops me like a blanket sounds are muffled and hushed as I settle into the rhythm of my run I relax and make myself comfortable as I run into the wild open country where there’s only trees and bushes and sea and my feet land softly on the sand splashing through the shallows of the rising tide in front of me a shape appears its outline vague and hazy in the fog it closes the distance and takes form and colour and turns out to be a woman walking steadily towards me her feet are striding across the ground her legs are long and strong and tanned her thighs are shapely and muscled she’s wearing a short blue denim skirt underneath her brown belly button her ribs rise up to her ful...

Rain has fallen during the night and has given a drink of water to the earth. The air is thick and humid with suspended moisture, and balmy and warm to breathe in. Just the way I like it. After emptying themselves of their content the clouds have lifted and shifted, off somewhere else, and have left the night sky stark and clean, starry-eyed and black. The Southern Cross and its two pointers are hanging high in the southern sky behind me, Orion is drawing his bow and flashing his diamond sparkling sword belt across the bay to the west, and there, high, mighty and lonely in the dark eastern sky, sits Venus, bright and round and shiny. Not the faintest hint of a glimmer of a shimmer of impending daylight can be seen anywhere around her. It is so early in the morning that, really, it’s closer to being late at night, if not right smack bang in the middle of the night. I walk through the shadows of the banksias and the pandanuses down to the water’s edge, and wade out into the inky b...

The fog drops down heavy and fat from the morning sky and settles like a blanket on the grey water of dawn, muffling all sound and squeezing unnecessary noises from the world. Contrary to all expectations there is not a breath of wind to be felt, heard or seen, and the mighty north wind that was meant to be still roaring after eight days straight is now conspicuously absent. In its wake however it has left us the swell that it has spent the last eight days whipping up, as it howled down from the mystic Far North possessed by its own insanity, whizzing, buzzing and whistling like a giant bullroarer, and with all its might pushed walls of water out in front of it. Like a metaphorical bulldozer scooping up bucketfulls of warm surface water, chasing it away in front of it, and making room in the upper layers of the ocean for the cold dark water from the deep down below to come welling up. It brings nutrients to the surface, plankton, algae, micro organisms, and injects life and vital...

For the past seven days I have not been able to see. Something got stuck in my left eye, some sort of dirt-piece, a bit of dust, or a grain of sand, or a smidgin of stray mitochondrial DNA, or, quite likely, a snippet of random toenail. Either way, the upshot of it was that by nighttime seven days ago my eye was bloodhot, swollen, almost squashed shut, and pissing forth liberally with fluid, presumably tear-water. I couldn’t open the eye, looking at any light source bigger than a lit match was excruciating and impossible, and I was in agony. It was like someone stabbing needles in it. So the day after it happened I spent the whole day inside the house, sitting in the dark,   wearing sunnies on my face and a towel over my head to block out the light. I pulled any and all blinds I could find, squeezed my eyes shut and whiled away seven hours straight playing music with my eyes closed. I played the bagpipes, the whistle, the banjo, the mandolin and the guitar, comprehensively pi...

We left Karratha in the north west of WA in the late afternoon, heading down to find wild surf out bush. Clouds of red dust billowed behind us all the way down three hours of dirt road, and slowly drifted past us as we pulled up underneath a scraggly old tree by the side of the road. Surrounded by spinifex and red dirt, the wind-bent and stunted old gum was representative of this part of the country: dry as a bone and wind-blown out, perched hard between the Great Sandy Desert and the crystal blue Indian Ocean. Plants struggle for a toehold on life between the encroaching sand of the desert and the salty, life-killing spray of the ocean. There are places, plenty of them, where the sand carpet of the desert stops right at the edge of the dunes leading down to the beach. Sand into more sand, with a side serving of salt. Just the way we like it. In other places the land rises up and towers precipitously above the water far below. We left our car behind in the care of the gnarly ol...