Going to the seaside

This morning, we caught a bus through town to St Clair beach. For just $2.40NZ, or less than $2US, the ride took about 20 minutes south and, before you know it, the neat and tidy suburban streets begin to thin out, and then suddenly dead-end at a promenade and some railings. Beyond that: gleaming bright blue breakers and endless cold ocean that stretches all the way to Antarctica to the south, and to the United States, thousands and thousands of miles to the east.

A shark bell sits at the top of a pole to warn surfers that sharks have been sighted. It hasn't been rung since the 1950s. Seagulls are everywhere.

On the beach, two rows of wooden rotting pier struts march into the sea, all that remains of an old pier. Half a mile to the north, on St Kilda beach, a long pipe from the local sewage plant feeds human waste right into the breaking whitecaps. I know ... that sucks, right? Apparently, the bacterial contamination was causing problems so the water treatment facility has recently been extending the pipeline so that it dumps the poop further into the sea. Even so, it's still a poop pipe in the sea. All the way to New Zealand, one of the greenest countries in the world, and we see a poop pipe.

I heard on the radio this morning a story warning surfers not to surf at St Kilda beach because of bacterial contamination. So, instead, they bob up and down at St Clair, in sight of the shark bell ... but if you stand on the promenade and look north along the beach, past the dead pier, you can see the poop pipe, dark against the foamy sea. (CK)