Casuarina

My perfect beach isn't an immaculately clean beach; it has to have some rubbish and flotsam and jetsam, amongst which interesting things are washed up; and, ideally, it has to be a working beach, with a few fishing boats pulled up along its sands. It also has to be backed by two types of tree, high coconut palms and casuarinas.

I had always thought that casuarinas, with their wispy evergreen leaves and their habit of whispering as they filter the sea breeze, were native to the coast of East Africa, with which I most associate them, but they're not, they're an invasive species from southeastern Asia and the western Pacific.

Like coconut palms, casuarinas seem to be able to survive on the brackish groundwater of coastal locations, so they're often found framing beachside houses. This sort of house, with its makuti palm thatch and open sides, is the perfect house to go with a perfect beach. It's cooled by the trade winds, and faces east, across the Indian Ocean, so....

....one wakes to sunrises across the sea, framed by the drooping leaves of the casuarina.

I suppose, if I were very rich, I might have a swimming pool to go with my perfect house and my perfect beach and with the coconut palms and the casuarinas, perhaps one of those infinity pools.

All pictures taken on the coast of Tanzania.