Cape Paterson Revisited.

While on our Philip Island holiday, we returned to the mainland for a day trip and visited the coast at Cape Patterson past nearby Wonthaggi. Cape Paterson is another of the places I have visited periodically over the past 50 odd years, first as a child with my family and later by myself and later again with my own family, and now just with my wife.

Leaving my wife reading in the car and walking down to the beach from the car park I had two different reflections come to mind. One I will talk about here and the other at a later date. (Not Cape Paterson Revisited).

Walking down from the car park little, initially at least, looked different and it was almost like going back some 50 years in a moment. In fact, at first glance the only thing different in my memory was that on this particular day, being winter, there was no one on the Beach! When we used to go there it was right after Christmas and people were swarming everywhere then.

The small cove there looked the same. The semi natural swimming pool in the rocks was still there, although on closer inspection it didn’t seem as deep as it did way back then.

Looking around however, although the Life saving Club Buildings and Playground was still there, many of the old buildings of my Youth had gone. Some like the old cement /Stone toilet block which then, looked like it would stand for ever, is gone with just a flat piece of the old floor left to show that something once stood there. . At least there was a sign that something once stood there, unlike with the old stone shop near the foreshore. Again another old solid building that looked like it would last forever but didn’t. Although it had long been closed, even when last visited some 10 or so years ago, it has now gone completely and if it weren’t for my memory, there would be nothing to indicate that anything ever stood there.

Man made things come and go. Sometimes there will be the signs of ruin left. At others no sign what soever, But the things of nature, the things God made, remain. Yet even there, there will be gradual change over the decades and centuries. Nothing, even the most solid, remains unchanged forever, and neither should we.

Yes there will be things of our childhood that remain like the beach, but there will be also many others that won’t and they should be accepted as memories of the past, things to be brought out for a while, and then put away again and to move on with your lives.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Holiday visits to the past, but don’t want to live there again. I want to use them to draw strength and encouragement from, and then to move on into the future to make new "Past Memories”.

How about you? Are you still living in the past, or are you just re-visiting to draw strength for the future? What think you?