Many of the new property owners at Point Lookout today are expressing concern about the encroaching sand dunes drifting northward from the top of Main Beach. Each year they slowly inch their way forward like a slow moving glassier rolling inexorably towards those expensive little holiday cottages nestled at the back of the Point. Well, in the 60s and 70s the local residents saw this natural advance as an opportunity to have their waste buried 30 feet under without the need to employ expensive digging equipment or even waste management staff. They would simply place all the garbage at the base of this loose sand mountain and let the elements of wind and blowing sand, cover their unwanteds with the minimum of human input. Well now, this dump area also became a local-knowledge short cut for us kids to get from our holiday house rental to Main Beach. We would walk through this dump and then climb the steep sand hill on all fours, followed by a long zigzagging downhill run to the beach. Now with little electronic or live entertainment on the island in those days meant a great turnover was guaranteed for the Durbigs pub each evening and it also ensured a little too much VB elbow bending at most kitchen tables scattered around the point. Each year one could see a gradual buildup of empty beer bottles being discarded in the dump. Some creative types decided to make retaining walls out of a combination of this growing beer bottle menace and some home made cement. One recluse even managed to make a complete house using the same method but tendered to use beer bottles whose contents had been previously been devoured by others. There was another house being built along similar lines that was not completed for over 10 years. I can only assume that this particular builder thought that one should only use the bottles from your own cellar to make the bottle-house an authentic structure. This creed obviously limited both his access to resources as well as limiting his ability to perform the required building works after having secured the necessary building materials in this way. Still I would guess that it only took about 500 hangovers for him to complete his 10 year business plan and dream. So now, those bottles that could not find a home as building materials were dumped at the base of Main Beach’s moving sand mountain. Well, it did not take long for David to eye these fragile and discarded building resources and see a full afternoon’s entertainment. David lined up a long row of bottles on the fence and then joined the itchy fingered Bancroft and all the other here-we-go-again brothers on the designated firing line with rocks primed and ready. It took a good 30 minutes to break most of the bottles from our sporting distance, before the fighting over the scarce rocks soon became the major entertainment on show. Then we heard this strange woo, whoosh, wooing sound coming from the end of the line where David had taken up his position. A beer bottle to hit beer bottles what a great idea, and what an explosion of sight and sound that was achieved on any direct hit. Well using this new weaponry we finally achieved our objective and obliterated all the targets that David had lined up and set for the group. Now what? The time for the flying long neck pigeon shoot with the accompanying beer bottle rain – that what! Well, this activity involved one member of the group launching a long neck bottle high into the air while the others aimed and released their stubbies at the falling target. A direct hit would not only score you maximum points but it would also reward you with the sight and sound of a mighty mid air blast, but more importantly the sight and sounds of the other members crouching and protecting their heads from the showering shrapnel. At afternoon’s end when the scores were all tallied and the head injuries attended to, it suddenly dawned to us that in our blind and frenzied excitement, we had failed to notice that we had completely surrounded our bare feet with a horde of broken bits of hostile glass. We then all got that uh-oh Colonel Custer surrounded feeling. Still we did managed to pick our way through the bloodlust glass and made it safe home to the puzzled and questioning looks of a mother none too sure about that rancorous stale beer odour emanating from her gleeful teenage children Beer bottle rain, Mum, just beer bottle rain is all.
