GRANGE BY GEORGE GRAINGER ALDRIDGE

For those not in the know, The Grange is not just a wee cottage at Magill, where the good Doctor Penfold settled  to grow grapes with his wife Mary, perhaps South Australia's first female winemaker. It's also a famous Adelaide beach, where dogs are unwelcome and alcohol consumption is illegal. It is a lovely calm beach,  like most of the shorefront along that beautiful reach of water. Witness the crowded Port Noarlunga, a little further south:

For many arcane reasons, it seems the powers that be imagine modern Australians and all visitors need lots of instructions for use, health warnings and 'read before opening' orders before they can set forth across the sand toward the ocean. 

The Grange is on the Gulf St Vincent, Vince being patron saint of wine and vinegar makers, vine-dressers, schoolgirls and lost things. Without his blessing patronage, it seems the Great Southern Ocean, as viewed here at Cockle Beach, Goolwa, an hour's drive south at the other extreme of the Fleurieu Peninsula, requires a lot more instructions for use. I'm amazed that the authorities fail to warn the unsuspecting tourist that the water is actually quite wet.

On the freshwater edge of the Fleurieu, in the Murray River estuary on the eastern side, there are no such warnings, which may explain the strange pagan rituals performed there, especially beneath the full moon ... photographs by Philip White

From Penfolds Grange and its famous vineyard on the piedmont, one can see the Gulf St Vincent and the Grange beach across the city and twenty kays to the east. They're the dim lights of Dr and Mary Penfold's tiny 1844 Grange cottage in the vines at the lower right; the Gulf and the other Grange is on the horizon to the lower left.

Don't ask me about the signs and wonders in the heavens - I think I'm possibly the only one to notice them. There were no warning signs. Somebody could be taken .... Ssssshhhhh!