Wonderful images to build this insight into the eroding environment around Hellshire.
In the 1980s, Hellshire was the playground of uptown Kingston. Every Saturday morning, a phalanx of UWI lecturers sunbathed and gossiped on wooden benches at the top. Lower down, families played together. We waited for the fishing boats to come in, bought fish and took it home. What a life!
All that is gone now, although the fish and festival vendors remain. The wide white sand beach of thirty years ago has vanished – due to various man-made environmental factors: Dynamiting of fish on the reef, destruction of mangroves, unplanned illegal structures on the beach, pollution and climate change (sea level rise and storms).
Recently, we drove straight past the non-beach, and entered a magical, wild place I had never visited before. The Hellshire Hills were originally settled by the Tainos (Arawaks), and runaway slaves later lived there. Some European settlers were there in the eighteenth century, but it was…
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