The Fishermen
A secret opening, a timeless passage onto the sea.
The cliffs of Arniston carry the colour of sun-baked stone, pale and ridged, their faces lined by centuries of wind and weather. Behind them the village rests quietly in the folds of dune and sand, but out here at the edge everything bends towards the sea. It was the middle of winter, though the day felt nothing like the season. The air was warm, the sky clear, and the sea unusually calm. Long swells rolled in, patient and unhurried, and for a few hours the coast felt softer, as though it had paused to breathe.
Rodger led me along a narrow path pressed against the cliffside. His step was quick, confident, the stride of someone who knew every curve of the rocks. At the end, where the sandstone folded in on itself, he stopped and pointed. A seam, hardly visible, cut into the cliff.
“Through there,” he said.
He didn’t follow. The gap was too tight for two. Instead, he stayed outside, steadying himself near the ledge while I ducked low and slipped in.
Inside, the space was not a cave but a crevice — a narrow hollow in the stone, just wide enough to press my shoulders against one wall and stretch my legs along the other. The rock was rough beneath my hands, warm from the sun. When I lay back, the ceiling sloped low above me, and ahead the crevice opened into a slit that looked straight out to the sea.
The view was startling. Through that slim aperture, the ocean spread wide and unbroken, its surface a shifting sheet of blue. The swells rose and folded with quiet rhythm. Framed by stone, the world outside looked sharper, larger, as if the crevice itself had been made to hold the sight. I stayed there for a while, pressed against the rock, feeling the intimacy of it — as though I had been given a secret seat, hidden from the world, to watch the sea.
When I climbed back out, Rodger was waiting. He gave a nod, half smile, and led the way back again. I carried the memory with me like something entrusted, a hidden vantage point not mine alone but now part of my own story of Arniston.
The image of that opening stayed with me over lunch. The hours slipped by, and by mid-afternoon the thought of it pulled me back. The sun was already beginning its early descent, casting a softer light across the rocks. Shadows lengthened along the path as I walked again to the seam in the cliff. I slipped back inside the crevice and stretched out against the stone. The air was cooler now, the sea brighter in the tilting light. Alone, the solitude pressed closer. It was just me, the rock at my back, and the window of water ahead.
Then, as though the view had been waiting, a fishing boat slid into sight.
Its hull rocked gently on the swell, dark against the pale surface. Two men worked with quiet ease, while another watched. One balanced at the stern, steady as if the sea beneath him were solid ground. The other bent to the nets, moving with the quick familiarity of long practice. Their gestures were small from where I lay, yet precise, their rhythm unbroken.
I raised my camera but held off pressing the shutter. I wanted to see first. The boat looked fragile from here, a tiny speck against the wide horizon. Yet in its smallness I saw strength. The men moved with the assurance of those who knew the water’s moods, who accepted its risks and trusted its patterns.
Arniston has always lived by this balance. Long before its cottages became objects of photographs and postcards, it was a fishing village. Families built their homes low against the dunes, thick-walled and whitewashed, to withstand the wind. Men went out before dawn, women mended nets, children grew up knowing their lives were measured by the tides. The sea provided, and sometimes it claimed. Everyone here grew up with that bargain.
The wrecks along this coast carry the same truth. The Arniston, which shattered on the reefs in 1815, gave the village its English name, but many others lie hidden beneath the water. The sea here is never fully safe. Calm can shift quickly into storm. The people who live with it do not romanticise it. They respect it, and they endure it.
The men in the boat were heirs to that tradition. Watching them, I thought of how rare it is now to see fishing done this way — small boats, close to shore, catches measured not in tonnes but in meals. Much of the world has lost that rhythm, trading it for engines and nets that scrape the ocean clean. But here, in this narrow frame of sea, the old way remains.
The sun leaned lower, turning the surface silvery. For a brief time each winter the air takes on this clarity, when sky and sea reflect each other with almost summer brightness. Against it the fishermen stood out sharply, every movement distinct. I pressed the shutter then, knowing I had the photograph I had come back for.
Still, I lingered. The crevice made time feel different. Its sandstone walls had held for millions of years, long before any boat set out from shore. They had framed countless other afternoons like this one. My presence was fleeting, only another set of eyes in a long record. That thought humbled me.
The boat edged further out, its shape smaller with each swell. Soon it was little more than a fleck against the horizon. To the men, it was the start of an ordinary day’s work. To me, it was timeless. I lay there until the last trace of the boat slipped from sight, reluctant to leave the vantage that had revealed it.
When I finally pulled myself back through the seam and into the open, the cliffs glowed faintly gold. The air was warm still, the sea calm, the afternoon pressing towards evening. I walked slowly, realising why I had come twice. The first time Rodger had given me the gift of knowledge — the seam in the cliff, the hidden view. The second time was mine alone. To return was to claim it, to let solitude reveal more than first sight could.
Arniston shows itself in this way. Not all at once, not loudly, but in layers, in rhythms, in returns. Like the tide, it teaches through repetition. Watching the fishermen push out to sea, I saw not only their work but the resilience of a village, the quiet endurance that defines this coast.
That night, as the sun slipped behind the dunes and the first stars came clear, I thought of the men at sea, nets spread, eyes on the swell. Their presence was small against the immensity of ocean and sky, yet it carried the weight of centuries. And I understood then that what I had carried back was not just an image but a lesson: that resilience does not arrive in sudden force. It repeats, quietly, day after day. A boat pushing forward into the swell, trusting the sea, trusting that home will wait.
About The Arniston Stories
The Arniston Stories is a photographic series capturing the quiet resilience, heritage, and rhythms of life in the coastal village of Arniston (Waenhuiskrans), South Africa. Through a collection of fine art images and accompanying narratives, the series offers a window into the textures, histories, and natural beauty of this unique place - told one story, one photograph at a time.
