Aesthetics can be subjective.

The engineers who built the Santos facility that sprawls across part of Point Lowly probably see it as a thing of beauty. After all, it does its job precisely; and elegance of purpose can be a part of beauty. Why do so few of us see it that way? You can't imagine a brochure featuring the Santos plant as backdrop to a tourist Eden.

A friend who was used to the lush Barrier Reef islands told me when I was first going to Greece, "Our islands would piss on any Greek island." Half right! Greece's barren capes and stubbled headlands rising against a blue sea and a bluer sky are a billion dollar tourist industry today. Yet it took time for travel writers and tourists to see much beauty in such minimalism: to actually prefer those sparse landscapes and pebbly beaches. ("Hardly one real beach in the whole of Greece", scoffed my friend.)

Point Lowly is like a Greek headland. It has the same clean minimalism: pure sky, pure sea, pristine beaches of unapologetically natural rock shingle or pebbles or, yes, even sand. There is similarity too in the close-shaved natural gardens of carpobrotus, samphires, dwarfed saltbushes that insist on existing upon bare rock -- and hopefully in the thrifty lines of the human shacks and facilities from Point Lowly northward. And like some special places in Greece, Point Lowly has an extra concentration of wildlife -- most notably the breeding grounds of the endangered giant cuttlefish -- that might seem unremarkable in a lusher region, but here stand out.

Looking at that long jetty which, seen from side on, dominates the seascape for dozens of kilometres, I am forced to conclude that the Point has a real beauty that is in peril from human crassness. No, those who object to proposals to triple the scatter of industrial buildings on Point Lowly, and to duplicate its jetty, are not being prissy. They are seeing a beauty that is real, and that our grandchildren (if it gets through to them) will surely treasure.

Mark O'Connor 7th May 2009

Lights back on

The Whyalla Council has turn the Point Lowly Lighthouse light back on with a dimmer yellow light