Rich people who swarm from the city to the country are too often a deeply annoying breed. These ‘sea tree changers’ don’t really want to live in the country or by the sea – not as it really is. Instead, they demand to live in a sanitised, picture-book version of the country or the seaside that they’ve seen on some patronising, middle-class TV show on the ABC. The Good Life and Sea Change are the two worst offenders.
Then they realise, to their horror, that some people in these places actually work instead of sitting on the verandah sipping chardonnay and admiring the view. Farmers run tractors and generators at night. Animals shit – a lot. And it smells. Some of it even splashes on the wheels of the Tesla (this was a real complaint a tree-change lawyer couple lodged with the local council in a town I lived in).
And beaches get regularly covered in stinky seaweed.
Cleaning the beaches on the Mornington Peninsula by hand has been scrapped after some locals complained of unsightly and smelly seaweed and called for a return of machine-cleaned “postcard” sand.
So, they don’t want to live by the seaside. They want to live in a fantasy version of the seaside. Where beaches are always white, smooth and clean, and seaweed never exists.
In other words, they want to live in a lifeless desert. Why don’t they go the ol’ ‘Leb Lawn’ and just concrete it all over?
But others, including environmentalists, argued that bringing back mechanical raking will undo months of progress in creating healthier, more natural beaches, as the rake inadvertently buries some rubbish and removes ecosystem-friendly seaweed […]
“Allowing organic material to break down via natural processes on the coast can reduce carbon emissions, provide habitat and food for animals, provide nutrients to support plant growth, deposit seeds promoting natural regeneration and attenuate wave energy. These outcomes contribute towards a healthier coastal ecosystem and increase erosion resilience of our beaches,” it states.
A cost assessment also found mechanical raking is more expensive than hand-cleaning.
Here’s an idea: why not leave beaches as they are supposed to be? Because, unlike in city-dwellers’ fantasy world, real beaches get seaweed. Deal with it.
Where I grew up, big die-offs of seagrass were regular. Especially in summer. Sure, it ponged, but, maybe I’m weird, but it was just part of living there. Even today, the rotten-egg smell of dead seagrass sets off a Proustian surge of nostalgia deep in my hind-brain.
If I could learn to live with it, you ‘seachange’ wankers, so can you.
Mornington Peninsula councillor David Gill, an advocate for hand-cleaning, said it was “an environmental backwards step” to return to raking. He argued the peninsula’s bay beaches are cleaner now, even if they look less groomed.
“Hand cleaning gets rid of the previously buried litter before it is broken up by the mechanical rake, and also collects from areas that the rake doesn’t go into because of damage to foreshore vegetation such as native grasses that hold together the dunes,” he said.
But Mayor Anthony Marsh said the trial had failed.
Only because it failed to take into account the overweening, selfish arrogance of rich city-dwellers who demand that real life conform to their ignorant fantasies.
