Happy New Year everyone!
We spent the last day of 2012 cockling at Goolwa Beach and it reminded me of this story I wrote three years ago about my childhood cockling trips. So I thought I’d share it with you today. I hope you like it and I’d love to hear about your favourite childhood food memories via the comments.
The photos were taken yesterday at the beach (Iphone and DSLR) and today at my parent’s house.
Christina xx
Cockling at Goolwa Beach
When I was a young girl the summer holidays stretched out endlessly.
We spent most of the long, lazy days in our salt-water swimming pool. We picked nectarines, peaches and loquats straight from our own trees when we wanted a snack and most nights we ate barbeque dinners outside on our patio, going to bed with full tummies and sun-warmed skin. It was a blissfully uneventful time.
However, nothing made me happier than my Dad saying five simple words: “kids, we’re going cockling tomorrow.”
Cockles or pippis are a type of clam, a mollusc. Related to the oyster and mussel they taste not unlike a razor clam. Encased in a simply hinged triangular shaped shell that ranges in colour from the palest white through to apricot and then to dark grey, they were then known in Australia primarily as fish bait.
We, being cunning Asians, knew better. Stir-fried with a handful of choice ingredients, the humble cockle was superb. Added to fried noodles or a fiery coconut laksa, they added a savoury flavour that was at once distinctive and complementary. But best of all, they were free, ours for the taking from their home underneath the sands of Australia’s public beaches.
The beach we always went to, Goolwa Beach, was about an hour’s drive from Adelaide down the Southern coast. Known more as a surfer’s beach, it stood on the edge of the town of Goolwa. Once a thriving Riverport Goolwa was now an easy-going township popular with fisherman and boating enthusiasts.
Having decided what day to go, Dad would then ‘phone up our friends to join us. Having come originally to Australia as students in the late 60s, gaining citizenship in the early 70s, my parents’ friends were a mixture of chums from university, fellow migrants from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, people from church and neighbours. So accompanying us tomorrow will be the Birds, Chongs, Fittocks, and Wees: 10 adults and 12 kids in total.
The next morning we rise early, excited as if it were Christmas. My brother and I help our parents find bathers, towels, buckets and spades, sunscreen, hats and thongs. Mum packs drinks, snacks and utensils into the eski while Dad fries some mee hoon — delicious rice noodles with strips of meat, bean sprouts and garlic — in his battered wok.
A convoy of cars filled with our friends follows us from Adelaide down to Goolwa. We pass highways, forests, small country towns, cows and horses in fields. We kids sing songs at the top of our voices until the adults beg for mercy, play endless games of I Spy and yell ‘tractor’ every time we spot one.
Soon we arrive at the small town of Goolwa. Bypassing the main street, dotted with cafes and galleries, we head straight for the beach. The beach car park is always full of tall, bronzed boys with sun-bleached hair watching the waves from the hoods of their cars, their wetsuits pulled down around their snake-liike hips. Young girls in bikinis and shorts lie on the sand and work on their tans, while out in their water the surfers bob up and down on their boards, untiring in their search for the perfect wave.
However we have not come here to surf. Leaving the main car park, our convoy continues on down a narrow road running parallel to the beach until we reach the car park of a national park, some ten kilometres away. There, we leave the cars and unload our gear before walking three kilometres over gently sloping sand dunes encrusted with salt and shells. The sun beats down on our heads and we begin to sweat. Our bare feet crunch as we walk on the broken shells, quickening our pace as the roar of the ocean becomes louder.
As we reach the crest of the last sand dune the Great Southern Ocean is a stunning sight – miles and miles of pristine golden sand being continually pounded by churning blue waters. There is hardly anyone else on this strip of beach, just a couple of families with kids, an older couple walking hand in hand, and a few loners meandering up and down, scanning the sand for possible treasure.
While the adults proceed at a more dignified pace, we kids dump our towels, kick off our thongs and hastily strip down to bathers. Impatient for the water, we run full-pelt down the beach towards the breaking waves, the sand burning hot beneath our feet.
We go in. The water is heart-stoppingly cold. We shriek and exclaim, splashing each other and flinging sand about. But there is serious work to do and we soon settle down, taking up our positions along the beach.
We scrabble around on our hands and knees in the shallow surf while digging into the wet sand with our fingers and toes. The cockles are usually buried 5-20 centimetres beneath and we wriggle our toes deeper in the sand. The tide works with us as it sucks the waves in and out, taking the sand with it.
Soon… success! I can feel something smooth, hard and unyielding between my toes. Dropping down to all fours, I dig with my hands until I uncover a fat, plump cockle. It’s a good size, at least six centimetres long. There is a minimum legal length of three and half centimetres so this one is well over.
I feel around where the cockle was buried as you can often find a cluster buried together. My diligence is rewarded as I unearth another three good-sized cockles. I examine them carefully for chips or cracks before stowing them safely away in a plastic net bag that once held a kilo of oranges.
