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Albany 200

I love the colour variations of the water, when I take a walk along Little Beach.

It shifts from turquoise blue, seafoam green to blue gum grey, and I tell my friend that I would like to eat it, it’s like a blue-green pastel layer cake frosted with seafoam and sundried seaweed. The granite headland piled with bottle green moss and dusted with sand, like a gigantic, crystallised cake server plunging into an organic oceanic dessert. A slice of time, two hundred years later, this great southern celebration cake sweetens the
moment. The rising rocks behind me a seamless presence, I lean against their firmness, and my toes sink into the cosmic icing-sugar sand. A stoneware cake stand holds up its bounty, it forgets nothing, the boulders an ancient witness to the whales and the seals, I taste salt-spray and smell burning candles, the flames of campfires and ceremony. I askmy friend, what do you see, in this place of plenty?

An Ordinary Afternoon

We are heading back… Maisie, if you’re listening, put the dinner on.

She snorted, smiling as she washed and chopped kale – harvested from their saltbashed garden - ready to put into the mutton stew. The radio continued crackling with the whaler’s chat.

Before their kids jostled home from high school she sat down and prepared to light a cigarette. She had cadged a stranger’s tobacco in a shelter in London when the bombs were falling. They had been partying together ever since, still surprised to be alive. They came out here in 1959 so he could skipper. On the weekend the usual boozy crew came over and she led bawdy ballads with her piano accordian. As always, his voice was the loudest.

From the sunroom she looked to the port and then over the Sound to Cheynes station. Gulls flashed frantic circles around early-returning fishing boats ploughing into the inner harbour. Black cockatoos - dark angels - screeched over the house into the bush. Gunmetal clouds, invisible ten minutes before, raged up from the south: a hoary, haywire wind flayed the ocean before it and then rattled her sunroom windows.

The unlit cigarette bent in her clenched fist.

Living a Different Rhythm in Albany

I came from a city shaped by vertical living — the concrete jungle of Hong Kong.

Towers narrowed the sky, movement was constant, and life moved at a pace that demanded alertness. The city taught me resilience and discipline, and how to endure pressure without pause.

Albany met me with openness. It did not announce itself as relief. What I noticed first was space. Land stretched outward, the horizon uninterrupted. Coastline replaced congestion, farmland softened the edges of daily life, and the environment felt expansive rather than enclosed. Roads were quieter. Mornings carried space instead of urgency. The ocean was always present, even when unseen, its rhythm steady and uncontained.

Here, nature was not background but companion — shaping days through wind, light, and tide. 

Without urgency demanding a response, my body began to change. Breathing slowed and sleep deepened. Stillness no longer felt empty, but permission. Healing arrived without intention. It unfolded through walking along the coast, listening more than speaking, and allowing days to remain unfilled.

What I carried from the concrete jungle did not disappear, but it softened.

Between vertical living and open horizon, Albany has taught me a different rhythm — one where presence matters more than endurance, and space itself is enough.

Gentle Albany

Albany

Gentle winds

Tree-blanketed hills

Rocky trails

And prickles stuck to socks

Small birds

Their sounds

Their flapping wings

And their playful tweets

Little creatures scuttle under the bushes

And the rocks

Hiding as you walk

Flies buzzing around

Landing on your face

Your lips

Asking for a swat

The hike along the mountain is filled with sweet smells, and the leaves brush against your clothes. Sweat beads on your skin as your foot pounds on the ground, over and over, further and further up. Some rocks on the trail are loose, and you stumble for a moment, but the scenery is worth it and more. Rising over the mountain, you look onwards towards the endless blue. The atmosphere seems to shift with every step.

Gentle waves

A blanket of sea

Soft beaches

And sand stuck in every crevice

Loud birds

Their sounds

The splash as they dive in

And their squawking

Little fish dart around in the shallows

Through floating seaweed

The sand sinks as you walk

Shells float onto the shore

Underneath your feet

They crumble

The ocean shimmers like sorrowful eyes, and the waves lull you into a calmed hypnosis. The water is cold on your feet, and the air smells of salt and seaweed. Living in Albany has made you accustomed to the surrounding beaches, but when you take the time to breathe in all that is there you find a newfound appreciation for them, every single time.