Underneath The Morning Star

Rain has fallen during the night and has given a drink of water to the earth. The air is thick and humid with suspended moisture, and balmy and warm to breathe in. Just the way I like it. After emptying themselves of their content the clouds have lifted and shifted, off somewhere else, and have left the night sky stark and clean, starry-eyed and black. The Southern Cross and its two pointers are hanging high in the southern sky behind me, Orion is drawing his bow and flashing his diamond sparkling sword belt across the bay to the west, and there, high, mighty and lonely in the dark eastern sky, sits Venus, bright and round and shiny. Not the faintest hint of a glimmer of a shimmer of impending daylight can be seen anywhere around her. It is so early in the morning that, really, it’s closer to being late at night, if not right smack bang in the middle of the night.

I walk through the shadows of the banksias and the pandanuses down to the water’s edge, and wade out into the inky black pool, waves rising up regularly and gently in front of me, over me and around me. In a few days’ time there will be a bright full moon, but at this point of time light is non-existent, absent from this world other than in the stars and planets above me. I push through the rows of breakers, through the sets, one, two, three, breaking on my head, and paddle out to my favourite take-off spot. There where a cliff face rises up out of the black unscrutinable sea, crumbling sandstone, a lone sentinel rock rising up from the sand and the water, a jumble of jagged rocks and boulders at its feet. A remainder and a reminder of a time 250 million years ago, when Australia was still part of Gondwana Land, the ancient super continent that included South America, Africa, India, Madagascar and Antarctica, and also New Zealand, although we like to keep that quiet.

A massive basin formed here at the eastern edge of the landmass, with towering high table lands, three, four times higher than anything here now, stretching out into the ocean a hundred kilometres further than where our coast is now. Fed by torrential rivers and raging floods, carrying down thousands of tons of sand and gravel, broken bones and shell, laying down layer upon layer of sediment, crushed subsequently by the weight of collapsing mountains, heaving and shaking in earthquakes and vulcanic eruptions, lifted up high and mighty and then blasted by rain and wind and sand and worn and ground down to the very skeleton bones of its existence. To the extent that now there are only three leftovers of the mighty rocks that formed over the millions of years. The two small islands sitting forlornly out in the bay, low, seemingly insignificant, halfway between arm’s reach and spitting distance. The next headland further away down to the south, known as, for the last three years, Shark Attack Capital Of Australia. And our headland over here, with this small cliff towering out above me here and now, in the ink black night. The rocks it spits out into the salt water form the barier our waves break on, with another, more prominent one further out to sea, sticking out right into the mouth of the bay.

When the morning light comes and sheds clarity upon the world, illuminating the paths of our endeavour, that first point becomes a hotly contested battleground for the first breaking wave. Here and now, in the darkness of the night, I don’t go there, and I’m content to ride the rolling swell in front of the cliff, and pick up the secondary breaking wave. At some point in time my mates will turn up and join me, but for now I’m alone, and I’m savouring the peace and quiet. So I straddle my board and peer into the darkness, like so many times before. I have by now spent so much time surfing in the dark that it has become second nature, and I don’t stop to think or blink or doubt or ask questions any longer. It feels like I have done a majority of my surfing apprenticeship in the twilight hours before dawn and under the moon, and I wear the soft velvet blanket of the night like a second skin.

So I sit, relax in the gently rising and falling water, breathe out and feel content. The quiet time before the appearance of the crowds is magic and precious. I squint intensely into the darkness behind me, see the tell-tale rise of a line of blackness that is a shade deeper than the dark around it, wait until I see the first bending-over curl of the crest away off to the far side, right below the ancient timeless sentinel cliff, and I know it’s going to be a good one. I spin around on my board, throw myself down into what I like to think is the perfect position on my board but which in reality is a different one every wave, and start to paddle forward. I have by now learned that it is crucial to maintain eye contact with the wave as it rolls in, rises up and takes shape, to take in its shifting, bucking and heaving metamorphosis from a rippling line in the water to a living breathing entity that will carry me across the water, if I ask it politely, show due diligence and respect, do all the right things, pray appropriately to the gods of salt, water, foam and sand, and, most importantly, don’t fuck it up.

The Morning Star above me smiles benevolently down at me and winks suggestively, nudging me with her elbow, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, and it’s all the encouragement I need, and as I feel the sudden surge beneath me of the wave that has come to the party I give a short sharp series of manic paddles, feel the tail lift and without thinking about anything I place my hands exactly just there, right there where I have been experimenting with over the last few weeks and days, and in one fluid movement I jump up. And fall down into the hole. Whoosh. Weightless for a split second or two, that most magical feeling, the whole essence of surfing, that blink-of-an-eye moment of weightlessness as you’re floating between the sky and the water, neither in one or the other and in both at the same time. And I drop inside of the wave, in exactly the right position, by sheer luck and through no skill or calculation on my behalf whatsoever. Behind me the raging ball of whitewash, forming and curling as the wave folds over itself and rushes on with the pulse of a forgotten storm out on the mighty ocean two weeks ago. In front of me the wide open expanse of black water beneath a blacker sky, the stars above faintly reflected in the rippling water, rushing beneath my feet fast now. And next to me, a wall of water, familiar now after so many hours and days and weeks and months and years of searching for it. I settle into a bit of a crouch, find my balance with my arms, push down with my accelerator front foot, and I shoot straight down the line of that wall of black quicksilver.

Then something happens that has never happened before. The wall next to me rises up higher, for some reason, and I look up at it. As I lift my head I see the lip above me start to curl over and the first drops of the white waterfall start spilling down the face, like the first runners of a silent deadly avalanche in the snow covered mountains. Above me, not in front of me, or behind me. I don’t have time to think about anything, so I just react with my gut, and crouch down lower, looking for that elusive sweet spot of perfect balance and poise, bracing myself for the coming impact.

And the white foam breaks on my head. First in my ear, then on my cheek, then, finally and unmistakably, on top of my head, raining down a shower of salty foam, and through it all I keep my head down, look straight ahead and keep on keeping on. I can’t see a thing in the dark, can barely see dark water in front of me and dark water next to me, feel white foam above me, and nothing else. Orion and the Milky Way are gone, the Morning Star has disappeared, and all I can hear is the roaring of the waterfall on top of my head as I fly on confused and disoriented.

Eventually the water stops breaking on my head, the wall next to me resumes its shining glistening black shape, the stars reappear, and I slide on until the wave peters out and loses steam, shaking me off its backside and continuing on without me as I drop down on my board and sit there, non-plussed, befuzzled, dazzled and dazed. I look around. I came a fair way across the black bay, not a bad run at all. I look up at the sky that has reasserted its presence. What did just happen? I have no idea. I shake my head in confusion. I go over the events in my head, and the question bubbles up from my excited sub-conscious, pushing its way gently but unavoidably to the surface. Did I just get barrelled? Surely not? I’ve never been in a barrel before, have only ever seen other people do it once or twice. Getting barrelled is, as far as I’m aware, the ultimate experience in surfing, and I have never had any expectation of being able to do it, at least not yet for a long time to come. It is something that I deem to be well and truly beyond my ability level.

I look around me. I see nothing, beyond the stars and the shimmering black surface of the sea. It’s as inky black and dark as the inside of an octopus’arsehole. I shake my head again. I couldn’t see a thing while I was on that wave. All I know is that the water broke on top of my head, and did so for a fair little while. And it felt great.

The notion creeps up on me that maybe, just maybe, I actually got in a barrel. Purely by accident, and through no planning, scheming or application of any skill or judgement on my behalf whatsoever. But nevertheless. A big grin breaks out across my face, reflected no doubt in the fathomless black mirror around me. Maybe I really did. There’s a chance I did. There’s a chance I didn’t. And I can’t tell for sure, because I couldn’t see a hand in front of my eyes. But, regardless, it was amazing, sensational.

I don’t feel I can claim it properly as a barrel, because, for one, I’m out here all alone and no one saw it, so that’s suss straight away. I can imagine the conversation with my mates:

‘I got in a barrel this morning!’

‘Really? Did anyone see it?’

‘No, there was no one there, just me.’

‘Ah yeah, a likely story. Sure, bullshit. You know the Golden Rule: if no one saw it it didn’t happen.’

And so it is. The other thing is that I didn’t actually see anything, so that doesn’t strengthen my story.

So I can’t claim it. But it felt fantastic nonetheless.

And so, happy as a pig in shit, stoked as a shark in the wake of a sinking fishing boat, pleased as a shipwrecked and stranded sailor with an inquisitive sex-starved mermaid possessed of an insatiable drive for interspecies cross-breeding and experimentation, I turn around and strike out again through the waves. Venus, the Morning Star, Patron Planet of Lost Wayfarers, Confused Navigators and Hypothermic Penguins winks enigmatically at me from her position high in the eastern sky, high above the ancient cliff face from where I took off. She is waiting for me. I set my course on her and paddle back up again.