We had a fun day collecting driftwood from the beach in South Africa in late August 2017. We spent 5 hours collecting driftwood from the beach at a beach near East London in South Africa.

Well, we say it was a fun day collecting driftwood from the beach, but it was also hard work! We foolishly wanted to try make less trips to the car to load up our collected driftwood pieces, and carried a bit too heavy for each trip from the beach to where we had parked the car. We were sooooo stiff that night and the next day! Sore legs, arms, shoulders, hands, neck, back.

I guess very many squats in 5 hours to pick up the driftwood pieces added to the aches and pains too! Not to mention all the times we bent over from our back down towards the rocks or sand instead of bending at the knees and squatting! But still, simply collecting driftwood from the beach wasn’t supposed to hurt us!


But of course we laughed about our aches and pains that evening, and the next day, and about how unfit we were, and were quite prepared to go collecting driftwood from the beach for 5 hours or more all over again as soon as possible. Maybe collecting driftwood more often might even make us more fit!

We didn’t go collecting driftwood from the beach in the few days after that though because we wanted to start lightly disinfecting and rinsing some of the driftwood pieces we’d already collected.

We needed to move some of the pieces from the new driftwood pieces area to the wire baskets we have on our fence for our “ready to go” (already lightly disinfected, rinsed, dried naturally outdoors in the sun for a few days, measured and sorted) driftwood pieces in different lengths – we place each specific length group into their own wire basket or baskets on our fence , so that we could free up some space in the new driftwood pieces area for the next time we did a driftwood collecting beach trip.


Some of our stock of specific lengths was running a bit low, so having some work to do at home was another reason not to go collecting driftwood from the beach again anytime soon. Promise! We weren’t just being too lazy or sore to go get more driftwood pieces in the following few days!

We did also have two customers who sounded like they needed some driftwood pieces that were mostly in our new stock rather than in our stock piles we already had. So we wanted to choose some pieces for them so that we could photograph the pieces and get the ball rolling. (Email them the photo or photos, let them choose their favourite pieces, lightly disinfect and then rinse the pieces, and then let them dry naturally in the sun for a few days before we’d pack the pieces and get them posted off from Postnet).

Actually the one customer just needed the driftwood pieces for her order lightly soaked and then rinsed, rather than lightly disinfected and rinsed, as the driftwood pieces were to be used in fish tanks. Any further disinfecting or soaking or rinsing or anything else like boiling the driftwood pieces would be up to the customer to do after she received the pieces. We do not do any boiling of our driftwood pieces ourselves.

There were some lovely driftwood pieces in our new batch of collected driftwood – perfect for use in fish tanks.


The other driftwood customer was looking for fairly long pieces (45cm to 60cm, and 60cm to 80cm) to make a driftwood chandelier, but that order fell through as the customer was called away on business for several weeks, so we sold almost the same batch of 20 driftwood pieces to another customer who was looking for the same or similar driftwood pieces (that we’d already measured and sorted for the other customer) to use in her wedding table centerpieces at her wedding in Durban in South Africa.

But back to collecting driftwood from the beach on that day in late August when we spent 5 hours collecting driftwood. There were quite a few more pieces than usual as there’d recently been some exceptionally strong waves along the East London coastline, waves that came up the shore much higher than usual, even doing some damage in some areas like to the sidewalk and little wall along the East London beachfront near Eastern Beach.

We quite often usually go collecting driftwood from the beach on the way home after a morning of trading at a local craft market, but then can only squash about 2 to 4 small packets of driftwood pieces into the car because the car is already so full of our craft items and craft market tables etc. It was nice to this time have lots of space in the car. We’d made a special trip to go collecting driftwood from the beach after a recent stormy ocean event along the East London coastline. And that space was needed – there were so many driftwood pieces on the beach! What fun! And sore muscles later.

It got quite windy a bit later on the beach, and a little chilly, but we didn’t want to stop collecting driftwood pieces. We had to stop eventually though, as the car eventually got so full it could hardly take another piece!


We did take a bit of time to enjoy ourselves though too, taking selfies and other photos, just fooling around and having fun, while collecting driftwood from the beach in South Africa.

If you live in South Africa and you’d like to order some small (from 5cm to 80cm lengths) driftwood pieces for your next craft or decor project, or for your fish tank or aquarium, or for your beach themed or rustic themed wedding decorations, or have some sort of special request in mind – want holes drilled into the pieces you order, want us to make you some craft or decor item with driftwood pieces, etc etc, contact us and let’s start communicating!

© Copyright Teresa Schultz and Tony Flanigan 2017