So I had an interesting time at Stockyard Point yesterday on the way back from
successfully twitching the Beach Stone-curlew at Marlo. We were following-up on
Tim Bawden's sighting of a race affinis Gull-billed Tern (subsequently seen
and photographed by Steven Davidson). We got to Stockyard Point with about 40
minutes of useable light left - but it soon became apparent that the first
problem was that it was low tide! Stockyard Point is not particularly good at
low tide - the birds are widely dispersed and there was no hope of seeing the
terns roosting. We saw them distantly in flight, but there was no way I could
pick an affinis at that distance.
We walked all the way to the point itself and decided to walk towards the
waterline, and stupidly I tried to walk across some sand with a little top
water (I had successfully done the same thing a few minutes previously). Within
a few steps I was up to my knees in quicksand. I struggled a little and managed
to get a leg out - and tried to take another step. Within seconds I was now up
to my thighs in quicksand! To make matters worse, I was weighed down with my
camera and (very heavy) 600mm lens, a heavy tripod, plus my scope and its
tripod... Ruth was still safe, but she had to very, very carefully head towards
me so that I could hand her one piece of equipment at a time and she could, at
least, take the equipment to safety. All the stereotypical stories of quicksand
are true - and it is absolutely certain that struggling makes you sink deeper
and deeper. I managed to maintain my cool (although I was quite afraid), so I
didn't get any deeper than my thighs. Once Ruth and the equipment was safe, the
only way I could extricate my self was to (stereotypically) spread my weight so
it wasn't concentrated on my legs. Bending at the waist, I transferred weight
to my hands and forearms, then as carefully as possible, pulled out one leg
(with boots now full of a disgusting sand and mud mixture) and then the other,
and crawled until I was on firmer ground. I cannot imagine what the owners of
the Chinese restaurant in Cranbourne thought when we turned up just after 9pm
with me covered in sand and mud from top to toe...
Paul Dodd
Docklands, Victoria
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