The Last Resting Place Of The Steel Lemmings

There is a stretch of coast on the Wirral peninsula that runs from New Brighton to the Seacombe Ferry Terminal, which shuttles locals and tourists alike across the waters to Liverpool (I think it likely that Gerry & the Pacemakers ubiquitous ‘ferry cross the Mersey” provides the journey soundtrack in many a passengers head on this trip.)

If you walk from the ferry along Seacombe promenade there is a tract of beach where what can only be described as an urban elephants’ graveyard for shopping trolleys can be found.

A legend exists in Africa of a place known as the ‘elephant graveyard’…

It is speculated that sensing their time is up, elder elephants would travel to the graveyard to join the last resting place of the many thousands of their ancestors that litter the grounds.

The scene along Seacombe parade reminded me of this story….dozens of shopping trolleys and other random 2 & 4 wheeled modes of transport (I counted 3 wheelchairs) lay spread out half buried in the sands,their twisted steel and aluminium frames reminiscent of fallen bodies shed of their flesh.

Theories surrounding the elephant legend suggest that during lean times starving elephants gather in places where finding food is easier and subsequently die there, which probably accounts for why elephant skeletons are found in groups near permanent sources of water. The similarities to Merseysides own coastal graveyard had me imagining fleets of shopping trolleys redundant in the recent economic crisis, slowly making their way through the dead of night along quiet back streets, drawn to the large expanse of water to the east and like Lemmings, hurling themselves to the beach from the promenade wall….

The wall is interesting visually itself along the same area as the ‘graveyard’.

There is hundreds of names and written pieces in the vein of ‘Julie Loves Dave 4 eva’ that look like prehistoric cave etchings. These have been rendered onto the wall by scraping away the lurid green lichen and moss which grows upon it.

One of the pictures featured below was actually used awhile back as background texture on my image ‘Bad Squid Beach’, which can be found in the gallery.