Through the clear water we could see the octopus’s garden on the lake bed below.  It was bare. Rocks. Sandy backing only.  But outside the desert circle it’s borders were green, ripe seagrass, whizzing fish and abundant life.

So much for that myth.  *  (And I thought I could trust you, John Lennon!)

While I laughed at the Beatles song in my head, Graeme, a fifth generation Australian fisher steadied his boat to slowly map the circle of marine desert below and said, “An octopus will eat everything.  It’s hated by most things down there.”

I remembered then some years ago swimming half crazed by the underwater beauty I was looking at in the Clovelly beach bay one impossible summer evening, the waves too rough for most, and it all quiet underwater, so I was fairly alone.  When, kerflash  . . . ooze, ooze, ooze . . . I saw a creepy, crawley octopus a-slithering up n over rocks just below me.  All around it fish of all types were darting at it, angry and very hostile.

I didn’t understand then, I did now.

Don’t you love these gaps between not knowing and knowing?  When at some unguessed at time later, often, not even expected, a later event will explain flashingly the earlier event?  And you suddenly understand something you only half thought about ‘til that moment.

And it’s interesting to see the sea through fishers’ eyes.

They call prawns the ‘rats’ of the sea as they eat what ever’s on the ocean bottom.

Fishers love blackfish, tho’ they’re highly unfashionable – because they taste delicious.

And, up here on land, we love octopus salad, a delicacy to many of us.

*  ”I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden in the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octopus’ garden in the shade”