Remember those trips to the beach when you were just a little kid? You would walk along the shoreline with your little green bucket swinging from your hand as you scanned the sand for a beautiful shell to add to your sandy collection. Maybe it was a whole sand dollar, or perhaps a jewel toned shard of shell. Everything was a treasure. You would bring them home, hose them off, and line them up on the warm bricks to dry. What is is about collecting seashells that is timeless?

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful beaches in the world: Hazard’s Beach, Tasmania. While the trip was planned, the shell beach was purely an accident. A beautiful accident! My wife and I set out on a hiking trip to see Wineglass Bay, which, by the way, is stunning.

After soaking in the beauty of that location, we traversed the Isthmus Trail of land between the bay, watching the roos as they hopped along on both sides of us. Talk about surreal! The last steps of the Isthmus Trail rise up over an embankment and then down to a deserted, miles-long beach called Hazard’s Beach that appeared to have been created for the cover of a Conde Naste issue. Stunningly vibrant waters gentle lapped against golden sands and not a soul was to be seen.

As we took the trail down to Hazards, we were greeted with a site rarely seen in Southern California: a deposit of jewel-toned shells that numbered in the millions. Washed up in what must have been decades of storms, this deposit was a reminder of the abundant and varied life under the water. It brought back memories of collecting shells as a little kid. Wondrous treasures were everywhere. Only now, instead of a little green bucket, my collecting accoutrement was my camera!