The Beach
“The beach at Seaton in Cornwall, this contemporary shot was taken 58 years after I left. Home was amongst the houses on the hillside on the left hand side of the photo. This is a repeat of the first photograph I ever took.”
Biography.
I was born in the North Cornwall, UK, town of Wadbridge on the 18th March 1947.
At an early age, the family moved to Seaton, a small village on the South Coast of Cornwall some 5 miles from Looe and 9.4 miles from Plymouth.
School was at Plymouth College where my father was teaching. There I remained until the sixth of January 1959. On that cold and rainy day the family was poured into the family Austin A40 and driven to St Germans railway station where the faithful family car was left and we boarded the train to Plymouth. Here we shuffled aboard the London train arriving at Paddington Station in the afternoon. Here we boarded yet another train to Tilbury docks where, as a family, we boarded the, “RMS Orion,”
Exactly one month later on the morning of February sixth 1959, the ship arrived in Adelaide. It was hot, far more so than I had experienced and the view from the upper deck of the ship was less than inspiring. As far as the eye could see was sand and saltbush, away on the horizon, buried in heat haze, industrial chimneys pointed skywards.
Despite the dismal first impression, Adelaide proved to be a great little city nestled on a plain, encircled by hills on two sides with the sea on one and plains that stretched away to the north. The beaches were magnificent, long stretching for miles, yellow, soft, but oh so hot.
Here at the age of 12 it was back to school, no longer the sea and boats, but a more mundane life of a city boy.