Paperbark Paradise

There’s a song called “The Song Of The Sea” that, not surprisingly, talks about the sea. It’s slow and hypnotic and mesmerising, rocking, swaying and lilting, and speaks of an indefinable way of being, a place and a time that are neither locational nor temporal. It positions this sensation as being between one thing and another, between one wind direction and another, between water and land, between sky and rock. It is, potentially, the space that holds the membrane between the wet and the dry, where the seagull, the gannet and the tern take their swooping dives and, for a split second, as they scoop up their prey and before they become airborne again, belong neither to one reality or the other, but to both and neither.

It is, in other words, Middle Earth.

This is the place where we come to play, hang out, socialise, enjoy ourselves, engage with the natural world and, for limited periods of time but repeatedly and consistently, become part of it and commune with it. For us Middle Earth happens between the sea and the sky, when we are upright and moving at speed along the face of a wave, and between the sea and the sand when we are not and are hoping that we can hold our breath long enough while being dragged along in successions of vertical 360s across the ocean floor. Synchronised Underwater Cartwheeling, a soon-to-be Olympic discipline.

If we live in Middle Earth then, inevitably, that makes us hobbits. And, as good hobbits, from time to time we get the urge to Undertake A Journey. There And, Hopefully, Back Again In One Piece. The search for the perfect wave is an integral part of surfing culture and history, and has, over time, inspired epic trips to far-flung remote locations where people go on to find and ride waves of a majesty and insane ferocity that boggles the mind and defies the imagination.

For others the quest for waves is motivated by a more pragmatic and modest drive: the desire to find uncrowded waves. To get away from the maddening throngs of tourists, blow-ins and passers-through, who invariably and with depressingly few exceptions, feel morally obliged to drop in, snake, hustle, push and shove for every tiny ripplelet that appears on the horizon, in their feverish bid to get their money’s worth for every minute of their hard-earned holiday on the beach. It is understandable to a degree, but does not, in itself, seem to necessarily require a total abandonment of manners, civility and decent human behaviour.

Then there’s also just a desire to see and try something else, to get away and check out exactly how green the grass really is on the other side of the fence. To broaden the horizon, to taste the wild wind sweeping in from the mighty ocean, to experience a different wave, a ride of a different sort. Paramount among the reasons for the Quest For A New Sensation, for the Search For A New Wave, is, for myself, the growing curiosity, fed and carefully nurtured by several years now of surfing strictly by moonlight, starshine and sunrise twilight, to see what it would be like to actually surf in the daytime. Warm air, sunshine and blue skies. What an unheard-of, outlandish notion. Whatever will they think of next, honest and trustworthy politicians? The very thought seems laughable.

So, in spite of dire warnings of the dangers of exposure to actual sunlight, we decided to throw caution comprehensively to the wind, put all our eggs in one basket and our hairy hobbit-feet in our mouth, and emerge from our nocturnal and crepuscular existence. We loaded up cars with surfboards, camping gear and food and, turning our backs on the bustling seaside holiday town of Margaret River in WA, headed off into the wild blue yonder, away from the Southern Cross, and northbound towards the land without fences.

Past rolling plains of coastal heath, banksia and casuarina. Through dunes kept together by spinifex and crawling vines, swept, caressed, assembled, obliterated and sandblasted by the relentless and merciless ocean wind. To the top of towering cliffs, looking down onto coves of rocky shores, rounding a point break and melting away into a long sandy beach, stretching towards a blue-green headland in the distance, with the tantalising promise of potentially another pointbreak around the corner. A beach resplendent in its desolation: not a footprint on the sand, much less a body in the water.

We tumbled and fell out of our cars in our excitement to paddle out onto waves without people. Five of us had come out on this quest for sunshine and uncrowded surf. There was The Snake Catcher, renowned far and wide for his uncanny ability to spot a dropping-in snake on the far horizon fifteen nautical miles out to sea on a stormy cloudy starless night during a total lunar eclipse, while looking the other way. He was accompanied by his son The Pocket Rocket Grommet, a pint sized super hero and wave-shredding genius carver with the world’s biggest smile permanently plastered on his face. Also present was The Snake Catcher’s partner, commonly and affectionately known as Blue Flame for her impressive ability to light her farts at the most unexpected moments, quite often singeing her own eyebrows and starting bushfires in the process. The nation still remembers with trepidation the tragic day recorded in the history books as Brown Tuesday, when seven houses, three sheds, five tractors, nine possums and twenty-one kangaroos were incinerated after she had eaten a particularly rich curry the night before. Then there was my partner, most usually referred to as The Evil Woman on account of her sadistic laughter, long pointed canine teeth, and her habit of drinking the blood of small furry creatures while dancing in the nude around midnight bonfires. The latter usually lit by Blue Flame in fits of spontaneous external combustion, most often by accident, and, occasionally, without her noticing. The two are a winning team. And then there was myself, Baboon Arse, so named for the inimitable and unique way said body part points to the sky while riding waves, quite frequently aiding wave momentum and surfer velocity by providing extra propulsion through the emission of jetstreams of methane. A great and everlasting contribution to the world of Top Level Surf Performance if ever there was one.

We shrugged out of our gear, wormed into our wetsuits and bolted down the cliffs, boards under arms. Running down the beach, splashing into the water, lungeing onto our boards, arms in the water, striking out hard. Sucking in the sheer joy of being in the water, of being alive. And laughing out loud, revelling in the unheard-of brand new sensation of surfing in daylight. All around, blue sky. Overhead, a sun shining brilliantly. The air warm, salty and soft. Bliss on a stick.

The ocean was smooth and exceptionally calm. The section of beach where we were was fronted by a massive inshore hole, two hundred metres wide and several hundred metres long. So we paddled out and over it, and found a luxurious sandbank at the other end of it, over two hundred metres from shore, so shallow we could stand up and walk around on the bank, never more than waist deep for at least fifty metres out towards the big blue deep. If any waves were going to break anywhere this was where they would be doing it.

And they did. They ambled along in an unassuming, user-friendly sort of a way, peeling off obligingly in nice straight lines, and eventually emptying themselves into that great big hole between the bank and the shore. Almost like a waterslide finishing in a swimming pool, with a big splash accompanied by excited screams and giggles. The user-friendly aspect was important and welcome, as the girls were relatively new to the surfing game, and wouldn’t have enjoyed having to try to cope with big rough breakers.

Out the front and a bit off to the side was The Evil Woman on a board known as The Hovercraft. It is unsinkable and unsubmergeable. I have buried it nose down into hollow troughs with the water lapping around my legs at mid-shin depth, dead set certain that I was heading for a faceplant and a nice relaxing tumble in the washing machine, followed by a sand sandwich, only to see it rise again from the murky depths like a submarine, and keep going like a firecracker. History would have been very different indeed if only the Titanic had been designed like this board, and made of fibreglass.

Off to my left and behind me a bit was Blue Flame, riding a board with the ominous and tell-tale name The Shovel. Thanks to deft design, prudent production and exquisite execution it has all the floating ability of a sack of medium grade gravel, and is possessed of an eerie, unerring, intuitive and instinctive ability to go headlong over the falls on any wave taller than the breadth of a small child’s hand, and bury its nose deep into the sand with impressive and commendable enthusiasm and dedication. A true gem of engineering, and a much sought-after item among the ranks of outdoor furniture manufacturers, roof-top cladders and industrial kitchen fitters.

A wave came my way and I struck out, head down, arms working, waiting to feel the lift and glide, when all of a sudden, from somewhere behind me, I heard a noise of consternation and dismay and, seemingly out of the blue, something flat, heavy and hard landed right on top of me. I did a mental double take, and realised that I was now pinned between two boards, one below me and one on top of me, with, as icing on the cake, another person on top of that one. Like a double fibreglass sandwich. The alarmed squealing on top of me intensified in pitch, and I thought I could discern the dulcet tones of Blue Flame screaming blue murder. It seemed she had somehow taken off and landed on top of me, and, for good measure, had gotten stuck there. Possibly with a picnic basket, a cup of tea and the Sunday crossword. Not knowing what else to do with a longboard stuck between my shoulder blades I figured I might as well just keep on paddling, so I redoubled my arm attack on the water and tried to pull away from the carnage. Much to my amazement I felt the weight of the world slide off my shoulders, an experience akin to that of a Thai foot massage after a barefoot marathon on an English shale beach in winter time, and, as the top layer of board and human slowly slid off me like an Antarctica glacier melting, calving and collapsing into the Southern Ocean under the pressures of global warming, I shot forwards, slid and slipped into the wave, jumped up as smoothly as a kangaroo with his knackers caught in a barbed wire fence, and rode that thing all the way along its full length into the plunge pool of the monster hole.

I was as surprised as everyone else.

Turned out that Blue Flame had gotten swept up by a rogue monster wave out of nowhere and had been picked up and deposited right on top of me, without even paddling. Amazingly we both got away from the encounter reasonably unharmed, with no more than a few minor cuts and grazes.

We surfed that waterslide wave for two hours straight, unwilling to let go of an uncrowded sunlit spot, till it was clear that we had to eat or be eaten.

So reluctantly we dragged ourselves out of the water, and went hunting for The Perfect Camping Spot. There’s a kids’ storybook called The Bear’s Picnic, where Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Kiddie Bear go galivanting around the countryside, led by Daddy Bear who fancies himself a bit of an outdoors man. They successively get attacked by swarms of killer bees, get lost in a swamp, fall of a cliff and have rubbish dumped on top of them, until at long last they give up and trundle back home with their non-existent tails between their legs (because bears don’t have tails, didn’t you know) and have their picnic at their kitchen table, which they subsequently declare to be the world’s best picnic spot.

It was a bit like that.

We drove around in circles, looking for a quiet and private place to camp. There was nowhere to go. While there was no one in the water there were plenty of campers in the national park, and we couldn’t get a spot to save our lives.

Until, at long last, by serendipity (What king of tea do you drink when good things happen to you by accident? Serendipi-tea. Thank you, thank you.) we cruised down an apparently bogus track and landed smack bang in the middle of paradise.

Private, secluded, shady, quiet. A beautiful spot on the bank of a creek coming out of a coastal lake. The view to the inland showed the mountain ridge that fed the lake and the creek with its run-off and, probably, a spring. Away to the ocean we could see, between the dunes on one side and the cliffs on the other side, the gap of the dry creek bar, a narrow strip of sand separating the fresh-ish water from the salt water, only breached in floods and unusually high tides. Overhead, a canopy of paperbarks, providing shade and shelter. The perfect camping spot. Shared by one other lucky coot who had plonked a tent down there and then buggered off. We shrugged. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t care and we wouldn’t mind. Live and let live. Plenty to go around for everyone. The early bird catches a cold. Red in the morning, shepherd’s pie. Tallyho, old boy, what.

We set up camp and shoved food down our faces. Jumped back up again. Peered up the creek. Peered down the creek. Discussed options. Proposed plans. It was as plain as the nose on your face that there was only one thing for it, only one morally acceptable and justifiable plan of action under these extraordinary and most peculiar circumstances.

So we squirmed back into our wet wetsuits, grabbed our boards, waded into the creek, laid down on our boards and paddled all the way down the creek to the dry bar. It was beautiful: dark tea-tree coloured water, lukewarm, still, unmoving. Sandy bottom that could not be seen. The complete opposite to the crystal clear ocean just a hundred metres downstream. Like a private watery highway to our own surfing spot, unseen, unknown and unused by anyone else. Fantastic. We were as pleased and proud as Punch.

We surfed the front for another couple of hours. Finally, buggered, spent and over the moon with a fantastic experience, we floated in to shore on a bit of whitewash, scrambled back over the dry bar, waded back into the creek, and stopped there, mouths gaping wide open. The sun was setting behind the mountain ridge, painting the sky purple, red, orange, black. The black cockatoos were stirring in the banksias on the dunes in the background, offering up a last hurrah before bedtime. The paperbarks on the banks of the creek were casting long static shadows over the black water, and the whole scene was beautiful beyond belief.

The five of us paddled quietly back up that creek into the sunset, like aquatic elephants in single file, some of us holding onto the legropes of others, being pulled along in slow motion.

That night we made a fire, cooked our dinner, told stories and jokes and laughed out loud, and laid down on the ground, looking up at the stars. The luckiest people on earth.

A perfect night in Paperbark Paradise.