Beautiful Newport … preparing to say goodbye …

I’m heading off soon for other places …

Kelporama …

 

Suddenly Newport beach is the scene of a mass kelp beaching … must have come from the huge seas of last week … this morning I was greeted by dull skies, grey sea, a surfeit of seaweed and no people …

But Easter Sunday was a different story …. the sun was at all the right angles …

People frolicked on the beach, a balmy breeze.

 

Seagulls were on the wing, an optimistic crab had cleared out his burrow …

And I’d been out of the water since February when the endless rains set in.  I was just getting back in the mood for a swim. Yesterday I longed for a dip but didn’t have time.

 

The water is almost warm and froths like champagne around my feet when I walk along the shore … but now the wind is cold and blustery and I’ve lost my former heroic urge to plunge in whatever the temperature.

 

Have I left it too late?

Yes!

Finally made it to the beach at moon rise. It’s harder than you think to co-ordinate having a free afternoon with the weather and above all … remembering to get there on the day. All those three came together yesterday … went mental and took over 200 photos … had to delete quite a few … here’s a quick one to start with … was a bit over excited about being back on the beach, and what with the camera settings for dusk, some of the shots are a bit blurry … will post some more shots during the week …

Spring had sprung …

Spring … the season in 2010 when a woman’s thoughts turned to … her blog …

Ahh, the roar of the waves as they hit the sand … here’s one I took in May

Well, they did for as long as it took for me to write this piece in November 2010 and leave it in the ‘drafts’ file, where I found it today.

So where was I in late 2010? About to have surgery on the hand. It turned out to be a fabulous success … happy to promote Dr Hile if anyone has similar problems. The hand is fully restored to use. Originally the thumb was permanently bent and very painful. I just have to be careful not to do too much blogging!

Yes it was a rough winter in 2010 … ahh the joys of middle age … my plan to swim through winter was stymied by ‘flu, the damaged hand, then the injured foot … followed by a deep sense of inertia.

Finally, with the help of some charmingly attractive orthotics, I felt the imperative to get back to the beach once more … and was blown away, almost literally by the sou’wester that was roaring across the sand … but my soul was elevated by glittering water, magical cloud formations, the smell of the salt (and a few decaying fish) and of course the sight of gorgeous young guys in neoprene doing their stretches on the sand, launching their boards into the surf and tossing their heads around amongst the waves.

Exhilarating. But I didn’t take my camera … used a couple of snaps I took on a gloomy morning in April and September of the same year.

Early morning surfer, September 2011

Here’s hoping I get back to doing a bit more blogging as the winter of 2012 progresses. Here’s a photo from the last time to motivate me …

Will I dive back in?

 

Life on Newport beach goes on …

Without me …

I had envisaged a kind of salt water Julie and Julia but  …

I guess I lost my beach mojo with the downfall of my thumb and left foot. But I know I’ll get it back eventually. This Monday my specialist appointment finally happens and I have great hopes for the cortisone injection (ouch!). It should release my thumb … fingers crossed (I just realised that’s a pun).

So, in the interim, here’s part two of …

Fiji … a waterblogged memoir …

Accident prone would describe my relationship with the water on our 1969 family holiday to Fiji.

First day: heatstroke, brought on by spending three or four hours straight in the swimming pool in the tropical afternoon Fijian sun against my mother’s advice. Every time I stepped into that sun again, I turned clammy and felt like simultaneously bursting into tears and passing out.  Perhaps I wasn’t as cut out for the life under a palm tree I’d imagined, but heatstroke didn’t slow me down much. I just stood in the shade as much as I could.

Neither did a run in with some sea lice, who left itchy bites all over my sister Diana’s and my legs after a wade in the ocean on our second morning.

Nor a massive dose of antibiotics. My wisdom teeth, perhaps in an ironic gesture, had decided to erupt fifty miles from the nearest dentist, causing my gums to become dangerously inflamed.

I plugged on.

Then there was the glass bottom boat for viewing coral. What a magic trip. The captain stopped the engine to allow us to drift over a reef looking at the azure wonderland below, and said we could go for a swim. So I dived straight off the front, forgetting the boat was still travelling forwards. Coming up for air, I was just in time to receive a mighty whack on the head from the bow. I lived, but the combination of heatstroke, antibiotics  and the blow to the head was making me a little light headed.

But not so light headed that I didn’t feel like joining a conga line on New Years Eve around the swimming pool in my trendy new culottes … only to be heaved into the water by a drunken reveller.

Having a thick skull proved convenient when, after hauling myself out dripping, I crossed the glossy parquet dance floor barefoot to get the keys to my room from Mum. My wet feet slid from under me and the whack as my skull hit the floor reverberated thoughout the room. Silence. I lay there, wondering what had happened.The band stopped dead, staring in horror, and a Fijian singer, wearing an afro and a gigantic floral mumu put down her microphone and floated across the floor to see if I was still alive.

But Fiji couldn’t kill me, try as it may. I figured the blow to the back of my head evened out the one to the front I got from the boat. Off to my room to change into my second pair of culottes (I’d made two) and I was back dancing again within 20 minutes, albeit a little more carefully, but not before an Indian guy had jumped out from behind a frangipanni tree and hissed like a snake at me on the way back to the party. I scurried for the safety of Mum and Dad. Come to think of it, this bizaare and unnerving sign of male appreciation was the only fruit my desperate efforts at sexiness had borne during the entire holiday.

Fortunately for my weight problem, the inevitable attack of holiday dysentry, combined with a chronic Fijian shortage of chocolate and pastries removed several pounds from my frame, so I was in fact slender and tanned, if somewhat dizzy on returning to Sydney. I continued to dream, unrealistically of the tropics, not pausing to analyse the complete lack of synchrony between that particular fantasy life and the Heathcliff and Cathy one that was developing on the grey and windswept Yorkshire moors of what was left of my brain …

Things are looking up …

I’v abandoned coffee and taken up jasmine tea instead. After two days of headaches am feeling a lot better  and my thumb joints are starting to free up a little … but I’m still limiting my time at the computer.

Meanwhile … another waterblogged memoir

Fiji 1969

At fifteen I’d never fully recovered from a childhood spent glued to the Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 40s on our black and white TV, among them, the Road movies of Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour . Somehow Dorothy always seemed to finish up in a sarong, whether the road led to Hawaii or London.

The notion of a long haired beauty in a sarong worshipping some bloke in a grass hut on an island had imprinted itself on a particularly vulnerable part of my psyche. The message of these films … women needed to be sexy, and they could achieve this via the application of a floral sarong, a tan, and an exotic swimsuit. They should endeavour to find themselves in a warm location where they could wiggle their hips a lot on the dance floor, flower in hair, revealing the maximum amounts of skin, in order to fulfill their potential as females. I could just see myself in the role.

My concept of a holiday by the sea had previously involved hours of  jumping competitively in and out of the water, or lying in goggles and flippers on the bottom of our swimming pool. Now that things were different, Fiji was to be the perfect locale for releasing my inner Dorothy Lamour …

Equipped with a red and white Hawaiian print bikini and a shark tooth necklace, a burgeoning weight problem, and a gigantic teenage ego … plus two astoundingly short mini dresses and some trendy long culottes I’d sewn myself … I was ready.

Only one thing stood in the way of my apotheosis – my inconvenient, but financially necessary middle aged parents. Try as I would to ignore them they remained steadfastly there, organising, criticising, paying for things.

The height of this incovenience expressed itself at the family resort, Korolevu. I had been cavorting on the dance floor with my sister Diana, who was legendary as a wild and uninhibited, if a little eccentric gogo dancer. Returning to the table, I was mortified when Mum hissed at me “Ask your father to dance. Go on!”

Gone were the little girl days when I delighted in standing on Dad’s feet while he foxtrotted round the lounge room to a 78 rpm shellac disc of Cole Porter’s 1940s hit Begin the Beguine. I loved Dad, but didn’t want to get up in public and dance with him. If I did that, my cover as international groove diva would be blown. Everyone in the restaurant would realise that I had boring relatives and the shame by association would be overwhelming.

However, Mum couldn’t dance with him any more since her tragic paralysis by polio some years earlier.  We did our best to live like any other family, but an undercurrent of survivor guilt ran through the rest of us. From a moral blackmail standpoint she was unbeatable on this one. I was forced to briefly acknowledge that Dad had a right to enjoy himself, and caved in.

On the dance floor there was a bit of pulling and pushing while he tried to get me to foxtrot, until reason prevailed and we broke apart and danced as one was meant to in 1969 … throwing ourselves round, together but alone. Dad danced manfully on, but plainly times had changed since he and Mum first glided round the parquet.

Phew, no-one would realise he was my father, in spite of the undeniable resemblance. In my funky mini dress, it was all about me …  and able to ignore him, I launched into the Skate, which Joscelyn Browning had taught me at school. Undeniably, I was the coolest person out there. The Skate involved a forward lift of the shoulders and arms as you slid from side to side with your feet.

As I sat down at our table, heaving a sigh of relief, Mum leant over and hissed at me again … “You can see your undies every time you lift your shoulders.”

This was well before the era when displaying your underwear became an important thing to do. For the rest of the holiday I moved as if in Riverdance replay … my upper body, specially my shoulders, frozen in place.

Next blog … Fiji part 2,  some waterbound adventures …

Easing back into the saddle …

Wrong metaphor for the beach but that’s how it feels …

Swimmer contemplates his winter dip while seagulls stand by ...

And I’m contemplating changing my online name from beachblogger to beachwhinger. Because now I’ve injured my foot, which makes walking the beach painful. Does the Creator have a sense of humour? If so, what kind?

It happened last week … and there’s great irony in the situation. I had to renew my First Aid certificate for teaching, and in the attempt to vigorously resuscitate a rubber torso during the class, I bent my toes back under me as, in line with six other students, I administered CPR. (Our instructor, a traumatised ex-army medic, barking at us all the while.)

Tip-toeing through the waves ...

Well I’ve got my certificate but now the foot is bound up and I can scarcely hobble down the street.

Luckily my visit to the beach when I first got back from Warrnambool has provided me with these shots to go on with while I wait for the foot to heal …

Including this little spider … eventually everyone seems to make it to the beach …

This little chap made it to the waterfront ... he's got eight feet and they're all functioning well, but I don't like his chances in the water ...

Not a flipper!

As close as I got to a whale

My poor neglected blog! It’s been over a month now … my hand still isn’t fixed … I stumble from physiotherapist to physiotherapist and they all give conflicting advice.

Meanwhile the left hand is starting to hurt as well as the right …

But it’s time to get back to a bit of blogging … here are a couple of beach photos with a difference … taken at Logan’s Beach while I was in Warrnambool attending my graduate exhibition. Logan’s is special on account of being a place where Southern Right Whale mothers mothers linger to give birth to their calfs. I’d seen a pair on a previous visit and visited the beach every day, determined to

Beautiful deserted Logan's beach ...

repeat the experience … but other whale watchers told me the mother and calf who had been resting there left the afternoon I arrived!

Crowds stood patiently, morning and afternoon waiting for … a few false alarms … and then … nothing. Still, the air there is wonderfully fresh and blustery and it was a great way to start the day …

A few braved the water to pass the time.

He's made of tough stuff!

Here is one such foolhardy specimen. Not only did he swim, he and his son showered in the cold shower on the whale viewing platform and then stood in the icy wind chatting, apparently immune to the cold.

I take my hat off to them. NO WAY was I getting in. Next stop south from Warrnambool is Antarctica … and it’s only marginally warmer in Warrnambool.

On my return I got straight back in the water … once … I’m afraid the implications of what’s happening to my right hand, combined with the flu left me depressed and too lethargic to care … but once the wind drops I’ll be back in. However blogs will have to be fewer to save the hand …

Bloggers beware …

Finally did something genuinely scientific about the problem with my hand … went to a physiotherapist. Turns out it’s an inflamed tendon from … blogging …

Yes, that’s right, my hours of harmless amusement at the computer have ended in pain … my space bar thumb has spaced too many bars and needs a rest …

He iced it and said it was fine to swim … if only I’d seen him earlier …

I think there’s a lesson in this for me.

So where to now?

Have to take a break from blogging. Luckily I’m off the day after tomorrow for south west Victoria for my graduation from TAFE … it’s an Art Diploma … only took me ten years to get round to finishing my degree … better late than never …

My goal … to successfully survive the long drive and see some whales. Warrnambool is on the coast and famous for its whale watching, so in between the graduation ceremony and a week long workshop, I’ll be popping down to the beach and hoping for the best … I’ve seen a mother whale and her calf there once before, relaxing in the shallows before the long swim north …

But as the next stop from Warrnambool is Antarctica I won’t be swimming.

And I won’t have access to a computer, which may be the best thing for my hand. If I don’t have time for another post between now and my return, have a nice few days!

Tuesday morning ...

Brain dead …

The nose has recovered but the cold has robbed me of my will to live. I’ll sob over just about anything on TV right now, particularly happy scenes …

However, managed a gentle stroll on the beach this morning. Had to do something to lift my spirits …

This morning ...

Not sure if it helped, but breathing fresh air was a good idea.

Meanwhile, here’s another, rather lengthy Waterblogged Memoir that I wrote some time ago … hope you have time to read it …

Waterblogged Memoir

Sometime in the 1970s …

My friend Toni and I had just spent a drug addled weekend camping in Nimbin (Queensland’s answer to Woodstock’s weekend of love peace and music). Next we were heading down south to swim in idyllic Jervis Bay, a couple of hours south of Sydney. But not before a pit stop at my parents to pick up cossies, towels and some supplies.

“Where did you say you were going?” my mother asked.

“It’s called Bosom Beach,” said Toni. A look of worry crossed my parents’ faces. “Because it’s shaped like a woman’s breast. It’s on Honeymoon Bay … beautiful, and very safe and quiet. We used to go there for family holidays when I was a kid.”

While we waited for our grubby Nimbin clothes to do the rounds in Mum’s washing machine and  dryer, Toni delivered a searing lecture on the immorality of private ownership.

“Individual possession of washing machines is a waste of resources,” she said, munching Mum’s fruit cake. “They sit idle all day and only get used once a week. It’s environmentally and economically unsound. Each neighbourhood should own just one and share.”

My parents nodded and managed to stay polite, having spent years listening to my sister Diana’s socialist harangues. The topic that really concerned them was my safety. Clearly they didn’t trust either me or the crazy red-head friend with the radical ideas.

“Isn’t Jervis Bay a navy base? Are there phones nearby?” Mum’s brow furrowed.

“There’s a huge national park there and this beach is very secluded and totally natural. No phones, no electricity. We’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t long before my resigned elders conceded defeat and vanished into the distance as Toni and I roared down the highway in her gas guzzler, hair flying in the wind. By mid afternoon we’d arrived at the beach entrance.  A wooden boom gate was open, half hidden behind some shrubs, and a very faint two wheel sandy track ran off the dirt road, through nondescript scrub. No wonder it’s so quiet … it’s so private we commented, feeling privileged as the car bounced through the entrance.

Ten minutes of negotiation with the twisting track brought us to the sparsely scattered trees and scrub of our camping haven, nestled in a seductively curving bay. No cars, no electricity, no other tents … heaven …

Across the turquoise water, not far from us, the headland was blackened, a sign of recent bush fires. Pitching our tent we located our bikinis and towels in record time, and ran laughing to the sand where we stretched out in the luxury of warm sun. But our sighs of relief were short lived. A mere twenty minutes later our eyes snapped open to an unholy screeching and a caboooom on our left.

We jack-knifed upright, as two small aircraft circled the bay. Each time they flew over a distant headland, explosions detonated with a nasty bang, an orange ball of fire and a huge puff of dark brown smoke rising from the land. I looked at Toni.

“Oh my God,” she shouted, suddenly invoking a deity she had hitherto expressed no interest in, “They must be doing target practise.”

My mind attempted to clutch at some sort of reality.

“Well, it’s … it is a navy reserve,” she added.

“Oh my God they’re bombs!”

No wonder the landscape opposite was black. Past bombings had caused a firestorm. We panicked, as the navy jets swerved to our side. The bushy green escarpment leading to clear water just around the curve of our bay exploded a couple of times, just a few hundred metres away, way too close for comfort. Frantic, we ran round in circles on the sand, waving colourful beach towels over our heads in a desperate gesture of surrender, yelling Don’t hit us!

Years later as I was telling this story, a look of frank disbelief crossed the face of my male listener. He left it in no doubt that he thought I was a liar and a fantasist, or that the mushrooms we’d had in Nimbin had addled our brains. But, although the photos in my mind are faded, almost forty years later, they’re still real.

Our beach remained intact. Perhaps navy guys liked an occasional swim there themselves and didn’t want to spoil their own playground. After half an hour of mayhem, they swerved off, having no doubt laughed at our antics on the sand.

By now the wind, water and birdsong we came for had somehow lost their flavour, and we were debating our next move as we lit a cosy campfire. The afternoon faded to dusk.

But once again, serene Honeymoon Bay turned out to be busier than anticipated. The sound of another engine caused a brief moment of panic till we realised it was a battered ute pulling a trailer. Crunching to a slow park twenty metres from our tent  two Aboriginal guys jumped out barefoot, in shorts and t-shirts.

“I thought you said this beach was deserted” I grumbled.

Suddenly aware of our total defencelessness, we greeted them cautiously as they ambled over to our tent to say hi. Sydney is supposedly ghetto free, and yet with no official policy ever being issued on the topic, somehow I’d never met an aborigine. Neither had Toni.

“G’day, we’re Kev – and Gordon,” said the more outgoing one, pointing to himself and his brother. “We’re doin’ a bit of fishin’ tonight. Wanna come with us?”.

“O…K”, we said, tentative about spending the evening with two strange guys in the wilderness, but not wanting to be racially prejudiced.

Assuming casual expressions, we sauntered over to their camp and were reassured by the sight of a big net in the trailer, which they were backing onto the beach.

“What sort of fish do you catch round here?” asked Toni, apparently an expert on everything.

“Oh all sorts, hang round, you’ll see.”

Darkness fell and we detoured to pick up warm tops from our tents as the air began to cool.  On our return, ignoring us completely, the brothers heaved the net over the side of the trailer, unfolding it at water’s edge. Kev grabbed one corner, anchoring it while his brother, apparently immune to the cold, backed slowly into the bay in his shorts and t-shirt, pulling his end of the net with him.

Seeing our puzzlement, Kev said “Water’s only waist deep here. He’ll pull it right out, then go across the bay and come up the beach over there. We’ll catch quite a bit that way.”

What he didn’t say was that this was probably ancestral land which his forebears had fished the same way, minus the ute, trailer and industrial sized net, for generations. And because he didn’t say it, we didn’t think to ask Hey how do you feel about your beautiful country being bombed to pieces and burnt to a cinder on a regular basis?.

Within half an hour or so, Gordon had crossed to the other side of the beach and he and Kev started to draw in the net.

“Not a bad catch” said Kev, watching the wriggling, heaving mass inside, “but we’ve had bigger.” Muscles straining, they hauled it into the trailer.

“Like some fish for brekkie?” he asked with a smile.

We looked at each other, still not totally at ease. What did they want?

“OK … yeah.”

“Bring over your fryin’ pan”. We did.

“Plenty o’ leather jacket here. They make good eatin’ for brekkie,” he said.

Pulling a leather jacket out, Gordon effortlessly snapped off its head and stripped the skin in one movement. I was stunned to see a fish so cleanly prepared without any utensils, in less than five seconds.

“You see you don’t need all them fancy knives and things,” he said flourishing and dispatching another fish in one gesture, “not for leatherjacket.”

He tossed them one by one into the pan till we said ‘enough’, and it was time for thankyous and goodnight. They hopped into the ute, lit up the headlights and jolted away from our campsite.

There was something about this encounter that left me confused. They were lovely guys. Where were the problems? Without realising it we had been brainwashed by our culture to expect the worst. Our ignorance was profound.

We cared about others and had often jumped up and down about our rights and the rights of various other groups. That awareness was part of living in the sixties and seventies. My sister even had her hair frizzed into an afro. But I scarcely knew anything about the history of Aboriginal people or the issue of Aboriginal rights at that time. The blanket of silence and lies was all pervading. A casual and friendly meeting with Gordon and Kev was my first real inkling that what we saw on TV and the reality of aboriginal people just didn’t match up. They weren’t the hopeless group we’d been brainwashed into believing they were. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about cultural genocide. If the Ministry for Truth spreads enough lies, they become the truth. And if you never mention that there was an Aboriginal history of resistance to invasion … well then, it didn’t happen.

Next morning it was a no-brainer to pack up and head away from possible death and dismemberment at the hands of the navy, but not before we’d enjoyed our tasty fried fish breakfast over the campfire, and taken one more nervous swim.

“You’ve still got to see Point Perpendicular,” said the indefatigable Toni. “It’s not far from here. It’s amazing. There’s an old lighthouse on this two hundred foot cliff with incredible views around Jervis Bay. We’ll be OK. They won’t bomb us in a car.”

But our tyres kept getting bogged in the sandy track on the way up the hill to the cliff. We had to hop out and wedge dry vegetation under them. I finally got the hang of keeping the car afloat on the treacherous sand as Toni gave directions.

“Keep moving, don’t stop. That’s how you get bogged” she said, her voice rising.

We were concentrating so hard on the sand we barely noticed the suspicious blackness of the terrain around us, the scrub just clusters of crispy charcoal twigs. Suddenly, the ominous sound of aircraft nearby. Surely they wouldn’t drop bombs so close to a historic building … and with a car driving through … with no surrounding foliage our old blue Holden station wagon  stood out clearly.

But we hadn’t calculated on the testosterone levels of the fun loving boys at the controls, probably not much older than us, and just as overconfident. They thought we’d make interesting target practice. Not that they intended to hit us. It was more a game of how close can we get and still miss?

Well, the answer was very close. That day’s weapon of choice was a rapid fire gun. We watched, screaming, as blackened  bushes jumped and shook alarmingly close to our car. What if they hit us? I slowed down, visualising a bullet passing through the roof of the car, or the petrol tank exploding. Should we jump out and make a run for it?

“Don’t stop, don’t stop” yelled Toni, “we’ll sink into the sand and then we won’t be able to move.”

The Holden plodded loyally on, wheels spinning, up and up the hill, while the plane buzzed around like a mosquito, finally disappearing as we got close to the lighthouse.

I didn’t ask myself when we got there if Point Perpendicular, the azure sky, the wind whipping our hair and the spectacular drop from the old lighthouse to the frothing surf below were worth nearly being strafed for. We were young. It was just part of our day. We bounced back.

But we did ask ourselves: How could the Navy leave an area where they were doing firing practice un-signposted ? Our answer lay at the exit. We had to actually crash the car through bushes to get out because leaving the park at the same place we’d come in on the first day, this time the boom gate was down. Looking behind as we left, I saw a round metal sign nailed to the middle of the boom, painted black with white skull and crossbones. It said Danger No Entrance. Firing Zone … by order of etc ...

Back in the dull safety of suburbia I didn’t fill my parents in on the details of our holiday. I deemed them too sensitive to handle the information.