Thinking - Easter - moving mountains is easier than you think

It's Easter.

Now I know Easter is really all about some Pagan thing and not so much about a Bible, but..

Traditionally, Easter is a time when all Australians get as many people together as they can, and drive around in boats very fast trying to do as much damage as they can to the river banks.

It'sThat's all well and good, it's not the speed that does it, fast boats and skiers just skip across the surface. But humans make these things that make wakes so your skiers can do jumps. It looks like amazing fun but it will destroy the river in no time.

When I was a kid of seven years old or so, we would visit an Aunty and Uncle living in a place called Port Noarlunga. The beach boasted a very cool reef full of interesting fish, and a little way away, the worlds highest sand dune (I think it might have actually been the worlds highest sand dune, and not something that simply seemed that way to a kid). A small shop would sell the normal crud that shops sell to people doing stuff at the beach, including small plastic balls with a tiny hole in them. I asked the shop keeper why there was a hole in the ball, and he told me it was to let the water out that I was complaining about that entered through the small hole.

That's when I knew there was a problem with the world.

But for a few years, this shop also hired out little wooden sleds/sledges/sleighs and sticks of wax to ride the sand dune. This dune was tall. So tall we rarely bothered to climb it all the way to the top for it was hard going walking up it.

Now it's not so tall, and the river at the base of the dune is wide, and shallow.

This image search reveals what it looked like about half way through the damage.

I put that mountain into the river.

Me and a couple of friends.

Even kids can move the largest mountain given time.

It only took 20 years or so to turn it into nothing special at all.

There.

That's the seasonal biblical mountain moving reference out of the way.

Now, lets all try not to destroy the River Murray like I did the Onkaparinga River when I was a kid.

Speedboats and skiers don't do a lot of damage, but wake boats will eat the rivers of the world given half a chance.



120 Things in 20 years thinks we should dredge all that sand back up there.

1 comment:

  1. I went back to this sand dune yesterday and we did much more damage than I first thought.

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