ALL the glamour
and mystery and terror of the sea were on show for me during last week.
All in three separate experiences.
The first- glamour-
took place at nearby Jan Juc. A lovely jog of about one kilometre. The surging
sea on the left, white capped waves hurled onto the sand. White, chalky cliffs
on the right. Me, with the stretch of yellow sand, cushioned between. My soft
sandy path suddenly ends. I have left the people, and the life saving flags,
far behind. I can sing loudly, unheard and unencumbered:
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away."
Little rock pools. Tiny yellow and white shells. And then,
just ahead, the path ends with a solid rock, but with the tide not fully in
yet, I can skip around the corner over shin length water, and open myself up to
an entirely new vista. You can pretend here that you have been transformed into
a new, C S Lewis-type world and left ordinary life behind. There is a cosy
hamlet of harsh cliff and gentle surf. A little boat could become shipwrecked
here. The entrance to the hamlet is spacious and inviting. The sea here belongs
solely to me, as do the shells and the smooth, untrampled sand.
The next evening, at about 9:00, I am on the long stretch of
sand in Torquay that leads from the edge of the centre of town, northward about
six kilometres to the beginning of the nudist precinct. I have run the six
kilometres on a cool but hardly cold night, my feet damp despite trying to
avoid every one of the waves that creep silently and stealthily in. I stop to
catch my breath and look out, totally alone, toward the horizon. There are many
shades of grey in this mysterious
sea. They say that the sky reflects upon the water, and I think about this as I
look across at the horizon, and it makes perfect sense. The grey in the water,
however, is darker and more ominous than the grey in the sky. I try and
remember the lines from Keats’ poem ‘On The Sea’:
"Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea."
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea."
Even though I am running into a breeze on my return home, I
somehow feel more light footed and at peace. Not exactly exultant- last year I
was singing something by Marvin Gaye at the top of my voice- more melancholy in
a way, but restful and calm.
The next day is quite hot and I am at the Torquay surf
beach. It’s crowded and rough. There are too many people about, and in the
rough waters, people on ‘boogie boards’ are streaming in, propelled by a wave,
almost crashing into people closer to the shore who are merely trying to enjoy
jumping the waves. I go beyond the ‘boogie boards’, closer to the surfers on
surf boards. I am hanging around with some other people, strangers who, like
me, enjoy going out deeper to experience the rush of a threatening, crashing
wave and being bashed about. Someone on my right says to his friends ‘let’s go
back a bit’, but it doesn’t register with me. I don’t really know anything
about a rip besides what I’ve read in a Tim Winton novel. If I cared to turn
around at this point, I would have noticed that I have drifted out further than
I thought, and across, outside of the space between the life saving flags. I am
about to experience the terror
of the beach for the first time in my life.
Eventually I do turn around. The waves are big and seeing
how far in front of all the casual swimmers I am, I realise I have to go back.
I still don’t realise I am caught in a rip. I perform freestyle for a while,
but I am not a strong swimmer, and soon I have to rest. Optimistically I try
and place my feet on the ocean floor. There is no hope of that. I pull myself
up and swim again and find myself having to rest, more quickly next time. The
water makes me panic easily. I still cannot stand up. I employ backstroke, but
get distracted by water crashing over my face. Treading water for more than a
couple of minutes seems unrealistic. I am starting to think of drowning. It’s
awful. What have I done?
People caught in situations like mine are apparently
supposed to raise a hand for help from somebody on the shore, or tread water
and drift out of the rip zone and swim in with the tide. I am not thinking
along these lines at all. All I know is that I cannot get any closer to the
shore, and my family, safely ensconced in their tent, seem very far away. A
little further away is a surfer. I cry out to him, weakly- “Excuse me, mate. I
think I’m in a bit of trouble. Can you help?”
Well, Edward, as his name turns out to be, effectively saves
my life. He is young and strong, and begins hauling me in. I gratefully clamber
onto his board, and he somehow swims in, hauling my by the attached rope. I see
how far we are from the casual swimmers again and feel stupid. It is a slow
process, and at one point Edward says ‘we haven’t gained any ground, but we
haven’t lost any!’ It takes about fifteen minutes, and at one point I am
certain we are both in trouble, but Edward is strong and incredibly mature, and
I am thank him profusely when he suddenly says I should be able to stand up
now.
I walk slowly past the other swimmers, and onto the shore.
My chest is red and burning and my arms ache. It is incredibly sweet to rest on
the sand. Minutes later, I spot a green dye in the water, just where I was
helplessly swimming. A loudspeaker tells us that this is where there is a rip,
and for everyone to be cautious. I bet someone with binoculars was watching
Edward and me from some tower. Incredibly, shortly after that, the life raft
bursts onto the waves and rescues someone like me, who has been caught in a
rip.
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