The road is considered a tourist attraction in the area, in which much of the road hugs coastline affectionately known as the Surf Coast, between Torquay and Cape Otway, and the Shipwreck Coast further west of Cape Otway, providing visibility of Bass Strait and the Southern Ocean.

As my erstwhile physician continues his unending travels about the globe I am vicariously discovering the view from southern Australia to nearby Port Campbell and (by extension on my part) the more remote island of Tasmania. Thankfully however I am avoiding the concurrent hiking which he undertook in the Grampian Mountains with immediate family from Melbourne.

Port Campbell is a coastal town in Victoria, Australia. The town is on the Great Ocean Road, west of the Twelve Apostles, in the Shire of Corangamite. It is popular for day trips as the sandy beach is relatively safe to swim in. At the 2016 census, Port Campbell had a population of 478.

Tasmania is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 km to the south of the Australian mainland, separated from it by Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands.

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As prosaic as may be our sojourn here on Hilton Head Island by a more social orthodoxy, the elemental features of this barrier island on the North Atlantic Ocean are indescribably wonderful in any event. Furthermore it requires immodest disturbance of my plodding existence to upset me. Certainly, I argue, at 73 years of age the decision to do what I prefer howsoever uninspired is supreme logic. To pretend otherwise risks endless possibilities of both physical and psychological travesty. In the result the conjunction of ingrained beauty in our surroundings and deep-rooted incorrigibility on our part makes for a sustainable union. Even if the natural beauty were an accommodation I can live with that.

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While languidly cycling about Sea Pines today it occurred to me that one of the winning features of Hilton Head Island is its faintly discernible change of seasons. I was forced by municipal repair work to get off the bicycle path and wander around the local but unfamiliar residential neighbourhood before regaining my regular stride.  Without exception the suburban properties are preserved to a fault. At this time of year however the lawns have that yellow/brown tinge peculiar to late season northern climates. I am always astonished by the contradiction of the dormant grass with the local Palmetto ferns and Sabal palms which I consider native to tropical climates. The first time on Hilton Head Island I set foot upon the beach adjacent our Marriott Grande Ocean condominium on S Forest Beach Rd I was introduced to the parochial winter.

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One could not possibly covet a more providential day than today! It’s Sunday morning.  I arose early and without contrition.  It wasn’t always so. The sun was shining luminously. And my decomposing carcass felt uniquely functional.  Perhaps it was because at 4:00 am this morning when as is my custom I awoke to take my first dose of prescription drugs, I afterwards sprawled upon my lair and administered to my aching calves a half hour of Theragun technology. It worked!  Who thinks this stuff up! The treatment induced an immediate soporific state.

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We regularly divert ourselves mindlessly watching re-runs of late night television shows which over the years that I have addressed the medium are increasingly loaded with political and social innuendo. Perhaps in the early years of television when late night shows were for general consumption; or, what is more probable, were confined to Johnny Carson in the early part of the evening and nut cases thereafter, the comic diet was fairly standard and not designed to hit below the belt.  Somewhere along the line however late night TV adopted the same distinguishing credentials as the American public which for convenience is divided between left and right, communists and capitalists, government and freedom. While these oblique divisions succeeded to isolate the good and the bad, the intellects and the Red Necks, neither of them was employed for much beyond the stock superlatives and absurdities (though the persuasion of Democrat or Republican was undeniable). Some of the nuances are less than hints rather outright slurs; but the characterization doesn’t generally capture any more than comic attention and expected alliances. What lately has awakened me is the burgeoning exception.  And I have to say, an unanticipated one. It is a piffling but repetitive wade into the murky waters of  religion.

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Sitting at home on a rainy day has to be one of life’s uncommon and less celebrated enterprises. It is nonetheless a heartening endeavour; and, given a chance, it can be inspiring.  In spite of its seeming unimportance, getting here requires inordinate confluence of circumstance. First, naturally, it has to be raining or at least threatening to do so.  Rain is not something I instinctively identify with Hilton Head Island.  For example – apart from today’s soggy conditions – the weather forecast for the upcoming week is nothing but sunshine with temperatures as high as 74°F.  Sunshine is the norm around here. Second, there must be nothing else on one’s agenda for the entire day – no shopping, no appointment, no visiting.  Which reminds me, I just made an appointment to have my hair cut tomorrow. Third, you have to be in the mood to recline and to suffer indolence. It is not in my nature to be slothful. For whatever industrious, pertinacious or psychological reason I prefer some recognizably improving activity such as bicycling. Admittedly movement of almost any description is the sine qua non of my less than demanding assessment of improving human activity – which might for example include nothing more adventurous than getting a car wash (conveniently out of the question today because of the ubiquitous puddles if indeed the service were available). It helps to achieve this mandatory dormancy to be in a state of overall fatigue whether as a result of “the weather” or as well-entitled exhaustion from previous vigour. Considering my non-stop activity this I view not only as welcome but also as needed from time to time.

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Though the wind is almost directly from the south at 16 km/h the temperature has dropped almost 10°F  in the past couple of hours to 64°F.  The forecast for the next week is predominantly sunny with steady temps during the first half in the low range of 60°F then climbing to near 74°F in the latter part of the 7-day cycle.  We’ve currently got several of the apartment windows open. The breeze is shifting the draperies and billowing its refreshing air throughout the apartment.

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Things don’t always go as planned. The simple matters of getting a car wash, putting air in the tyres and filling the gas tank for example were each pestered this morning with unanticipated complication. Even before all that began, I was on the computer earlier around 7:30 am (the car wash doesn’t open until eight o’clock) and I couldn’t get my Apple Music “Listen Now” feature to work.  In fact, none of the Apple Music features including Browse or Radio were working.  At the time I settled for one of my Playlists, in particular Johnny Nash singing “I can see clearly now” with the lovely repetitious words, “It’s gonna be a bright sunshiny day!” Hours later, after turning off my entire computer and re-starting the device and, under the further direction of His Lordship, “quitting” the logo from the computer launchpad, all the Apple Music features have returned to normal. I’m now listening to Kiri Te Kanawa singing “O Mio Babinno Caro” from Giacomo Puccini’s comic opera Gianni Schicchi based on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

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Listening as I now am while sipping my electrifying triple espresso to the title theme of Chariots of Fire does nothing to stabilize this morning’s keenness for the beach.  It helps too that the weather today was once again ideal for my 17.23 Km sail along the beach directly into the dazzling sunshine from Coligny Beach Park. The 10 km/h wind was almost exactly from the east which coincides with the axis of Hilton Head Island along the North Atlantic Ocean. In unanticipated fervour, when I set foot upon the beach at Coligny, I directed myself into the wind to gather a view of the beach from that angle instead of heading directly to Sea Pines Beach Club with the wind at my back.  Going past Marker 65 in that opposite direction is not something I do as regularly as I did in year’s past when I had greater physical stamina.  But a quick glance told me it was worth taking a better look.

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Last night while slumped in a drawing room chair after dinner watching re-runs of Seinfeld on television I overheard one of the characters say something that caught my ear. To be truthful I was fussing on my iPhone and not really watching the show. But what I heard captured my attention.

Seinfeld is an American sitcom television series created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, over nine seasons and 180 episodes. It stars Seinfeld as a fictionalized version of himself and focuses on his personal life with three of his friends: George Costanza (Jason Alexander), former girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his neighbor from across the hall, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards). It is set mostly in an apartment building in Manhattan’s Upper West Side in New York City. It has been described as “a show about nothing”, often focusing on the minutiae of daily life.

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