Have you ever been to a place a number of times and spent a reasonable amount of time there, yet somehow missed a hidden gem? So it was with us as we looked for easy walks in Eden and surrounds for Dad to manage with his sore hip, and to take photos. Asling Beach is Eden's main stretch of beach - we stayed at a caravan park at one end last year, in fact, we spent a whole week at this place and never walked up the end to discover the man made swimming pool there.

The walk is only about a kilometre from the carpark, and the closer you get to the rocky outcrop the more the pool becomes visible. It sits so subtly in the natural landscape it's not intrusive at all, yet I doubt a council would be able to get approval to build something like this now. But I digress - firstly, the colour of the rocks is jsut so unusual. I can imagine at sunrise it would glow quite an unearthly colour. There is a huge bulbous mark in the middle that gives it a certain whale like appearance, a gargantuan creature stuck in time.

In some ways it was disappointing - I imagined it more swimmable. Yet it's for children after all - hardly a lap pool. If they did get a digger to get the sand out I imagine they would be able to swim laps in it! There are photos on line of it looking - well, more swimming pooly.

I quite liked the straight lines of the pool in contrast to the curves of the cliff. It's quite amazing the quality you can get with a phone camera these days - I am really getting into composition so that the photo is a little more than a snapshot. This one I was particularly pleased with.

My Dad loved it - he likes feats of engineering and appreciates the community effort behind building such a thing. There's quite a few on the coast, but not down our way - too cold, I expect, and I can hear the controversy now as no one likes the natural environment being messed with. Still, a balance can be achieved.

From a distanced, certainly, you wouldn't even notice it was there - in fact, last year, we had no idea!

On the way back we found a random chair, which we had a bit of fun with.

I did really love the pool, but what I really loved was spending a bit of time with my parents. We had such a lovely morning visiting a few easy to access sites and had a coffee by the Eden Wharf. It cheered Dad up a bit - it's hard to come to terms with one's diminished physicality and he's always been such an active man. I often here them saying, as we go off on adventures: 'well, we've had our time', but it can't be easy. There's still so much life in both of them - here's to hoping Dad gets the hip sorted out soon.

With Love,

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