Buried treasure
A live baby sperm whale was probably my most memorable. Poor fucker.
Money , huge marlin , whale skeletons. Ambergris....any one found any floating gold ?
Walking towards the far end of Parsons Beach I thought it was a boulder that was somehow exposed as I walked towards it, finally got up to it and it was a headless bull seal with one flank bearing the marks of a good raking bite. Another time at the Murray mouth a very large whale vertebrae was exposed, tried as hard as I could to move it but nup, it's still probably there.
Always had good luck finding sinkers, floats, swivels etc on the Chuns cliffs at cactus, made loosing tackle so much easier to deal with.
A Rip Curl watch at Dee Why Beach, still running, set to New Zealand time!
My Mum has found, not one, but two glass fishing floats while beachcombing. Both of them now hang from a tree in my frontyard. Look superb too.
I have a nondescript piece of waterlogged timber in my shed that's my most valuable piece of bounty. I got it while fishing with my brother in law off a headland south of Forster many years ago. Drinking and rockfishing weren't providing enough thrills so we took turns diving into a nearby pool that was being lashed by waves and whitewash. The wood was being thrashed around and we were trying to fetch it without being dragged across the barnacle-encrusted platform. I won that challenge so I have the wood.
Can't remember if I caught any fish though.
Watch your back , Nettle.
Those glass fishing floats are my missus holy grail. If she knew your mom has been removing her potential treasure then shit could get crazy.She spends hours and hours on the beach and she’s never found one. I’ve even considered buying one and planting it on a beach for her to find , but even I’m not that much of a piece of shit.
Drift wood ...fuck , I reckon I’ve dragged several tons of the shit back to various cars over the years. Everyone we know has some of her driftwood furniture. It’s actually not too bad.
Ash - Nothing provides inspiration to get out there more than a highly agile sea animal that’s been recently caned by a very large fish , huh ? I’ve heard a story that marine mammal bones are bad juju if you keep them. Whale bones are cool as fuck though.
BB - That watch is a good score. Loving the aside that it’s set to Kiwi time so it’s basically a victimless piece of good fortune .. For it to have provided any functionality to its original owner , it’s obviously digital .......jokes , my kiwi brothers.
PS There is one place that I love diving for tackle. Nothing like watching the crew roll up in their BCF shirts and start casting expensive shit straight into those snags.
Yep Backstairs passage ( the bit between Kangaroo Island and Cape Jervois ) is home to some sizey beasts, both fish and mammalian and I've always thought that it was good juju that I didn't take home that whale souvenir, what was I going to do with it anyway?
Most interesting thing I ever found was a Peruvian banknote.
I was working on a shell diving boat and we were about 140 nautical miles south east of Mackay on the inside of the Swain Reefs.
I was looking for shells in a lagoon on the reeftop and found a banknote to the value of 100 Sol.
Some weird shit must go down out there sometimes.
A few years ago after a large storm the beach here lost a lot of sand which exposed bits and pieces left after the sand mining had gone thru,pipes sticking out of the sand timber struts like those of a possible frame of a boat or some other man made thing which was pretty much un reconisible as to what it was.Real locals pre 70s said they had never seen the items before and 2 weeks later they were gone back to being buried......which leads to the notion that the beach must have been at that level all those years ago when it was mined.Im talking a 6 -8 meter drop.....right now the sands as high as it was 16 years ago.
So may different things.
Whole boats wrecked
A big bag of shucked abalone (didn't keep) that latter read in the local paper poachers were caught so they must have ditched some.
Maybe the most prized is a nice paper nautilus, they only come up every 7 years or so and most are damaged.
Always like finding dried sea horses and sea dragons.
I have little rocky bays i like to visit every once in a while that are scattered in all kinds of interesting flotsam and jetsam
Beachcombing is an inherent part of the surfers life. Whether you intend to or not , you’re watching what the tide , wind and waves deposit on the coastal margin every time you hit the water for some deep tube therapy.
Apart from beach sojourns as part of surfing , fishing and diving expeditions I’m a pretty hardcore beachcomber for the sake of it . Journeying to remote and exposed coasts thrills me and part of the excitement is not knowing what you’ll find washed ashore or uncovered by the elements . Be it fishing lures , rare shells , natural artefacts or just plain old interesting items there is usually something that catches my eye .
So ....what’s the most interesting thing you’ve found on a beach ?