The Art Of Cartwheeling

‘Nah’, said Chief Switchfoot,’it’s gonna be dead high tide and northerly. It’ll be shit. I’m gonna sleep in.’

And he slept in.

‘Can’t make it’, said The Snake Catcher,’I’ve got an early start.’

And he started early.

The night was black and dark. This is not unusual.

There were two shadowy figures in the carpark, talking in hushed, depressed tones. The Baboon recognised them by the distinctive glimmer and shine of their respective eyes and teeth.

‘Morning fellas!’, he chirped cheerfully as he bounced towards them, knuckles dragging over the ground, ‘how are yous?’
‘Shit’, grumbled The Uncle, who is not given to unnecessary positivity, ‘there’s no waves.’
‘I am very well, thank you’, replied The Space Shuttle, whose outlook of life is of an altogether more brighter stripe, ‘how are you?’
“I’m good, thanks’, The Baboon replied, ‘what’s it look like?’
‘It’s dead flat’, offered The Uncle morosely, ’it’s like a lake.’
‘Yes, there’s not a ripple’, agreed The Space Shuttle. ‘We had a good look, and there’s nothing.’
‘All right. Well, I’m gonna have a look anyway. Yous wanna come for another squiz?’, said The Baboon, whose near-suicidal optimism has recently been itemised into a vaccine for the Corona virus.
‘Nah, fuck that’, growled The Uncle.

And he removed himself from the scene in a cloud of smoke, dust and dead bush turkeys.

‘Sure, why not’, agreed The Space Shuttle pleasantly.

And they made their way down to the water.

The Baboon stared at the water. It was black. And flat.

‘Right’, he said, picking his nose thoughtfully and eating a booger. ‘That’s pretty flat.’
‘Yes’, The Space Shuttle concurred, ‘you could say that.’

And they turned around and dragged themselves away from the sorry spectacle, tears in their eyes.

Halfway back to the carpark they were stopped by The Shredder.

‘What’s it look like, fellas?’, said The Shredder, who habitually surfs only three-foot Esky lids and requires drops the size of a three storey house just to be able to get to his feet and get started.
‘Weeellll ...’, started The Baboon.
‘You wouldn’t like it ...’, added The Space Shuttle.
‘It’s flat’, they declared in unison and with feeling.
‘What, really?’, said The Shredder, who is deaf in one ear and a bit hard of hearing in the other. ‘But there’s meant to be some swell coming through. Let’s go have a look, ey?’
‘Sure’, agreed The Space Shuttle and The Baboon.

And The Space Shuttle walked back down to the water for the third time that morning, because all good things come in threes. And, besides, you never know. It could have changed.

The Shredder stared at the water thoughtfully and tugged his earlobe. He absent-mindedly fished an earwig out of it and tossed it into the water. It wriggled and squirmed helplessly for a few seconds then got snatched up and devoured by Snowy, the eight-foot great white shark that patrols the bay for them and keeps other sharks away. They patted him on the head affectionately.

‘Right’, muttered The Shredder glumly,’’s not looking real flash, is it.’
‘It’s not’, the other two nodded, and wrung their hands in despair.
‘Good morning, how are you?’, a voice came from behind.

The three hapless and waveless would-be surfers turned to find Mr Kamikaze standing there. Salt tears were streaming down his face.
‘No waves today?’, enquired Mr Kamikaze, who has the nerve-wrecking ability to not only catch wavelets so small they are not discernible by the naked eye to any mere mortal but also ride them to within a bee’s-dick distance from razor sharp carnivorous rocks and survive it to tell the tale.

‘Don’t look like it much’, bellowed The Baboon in a mellow and quiet tone of voice more often associated with rock concerts, political rallies and earthquakes. It has recently been discovered, through a cunning genetic experiment involving beer, hypodermic needles and Thai massage that his ancestry includes a dash of Black Howler Monkey. This may go some way towards explaining the torrent of noise pollution habitually manifesting itself in his wake.

‘Oh. No good’, replied Mr Kamikaze, his face distorting with the G-force generated by The Baboon’s address. Blobs of earwax flew out of his ears and ricocheted dangerously through the adjacent rainforest, knocking out an unsuspecting possum and felling three pandanuses.

‘Yeah’, the others all concurred with palpable disappointment.

‘All right, let’s go check Wallaby Point’, The Baboon suggested with manic hopefulness. Wallaby Point is the default back-up plan in case of flatness in the bay.

‘Not me’, declared The Space Shuttle firmly, and shook his head, ’I’ve seen enough flat water for one day. I’m going back to bed.’

And he went back to bed.

The remaining three looked at the night sky. The eastern bit remained suspiciously black. A return to bed presented itself as quite a sensible and justifiable option.

‘Fuck that’, offered one of them, ’let’s go to Wallaby Point.’

And they went to Wallaby Point.

The ocean stretched out placidly from one end of Wallaby Point to the other. To its credit the point had provided water movement. There was uncertainty among the group about whether or not the designation “waves” could be applied to this movement with any reliable degree of veracity. Bits of water stood up randomly in one corner, flapped around listlessly for a bit and then collapsed and crashed in nondescript dejected spoil-heaps of slag.

A beach-side bench stood invitingly and conveniently in front of them. They looked at it. It looked back, winked, beckoned suggestively and showed a bit of leg. They slunk down on it with the graceful slouch of hibernating centipedes. They stared at the water.

‘You know’, began The Black Howler Baboon,’if we sit down here we’ll never get back up again. Every time we have we’ve ended up going home dry.’
‘Yes, for good reason’, suggested The Shredder, ‘look at it, it’s fucked.’
‘That’s right’, Mr Kamikaze grinned in agreement.

They looked at it. It was fucked.

‘Well, I’m going anyway’, exclaimed The Black Howler Baboon, whose depth and breadth of enthusiasm and foolhardy inclination to see things that don’t exist are only matched by his remarkable lack of any discernible surfing ability. ‘We didn’t come here to fuck spiders. Are yous coming?’
‘No’, declined The Shredder, as he lashed himself to the bench with the pair of handcuffs he habitually carries around with him on the off-chance of getting to indulge in a bit of bondage in the carpark. ‘You’re insane.’
‘No thanks’, said Mr Kamikaze, who was a lot more politer than The Shredder, and proceeded to hide under the bench with a blanket over his head and his fingers in his ears.

So The Black Howler Baboon got up, got his board and paddled out into the ragged mess caused by a night of raging northerly. Water broke left, right and on his head, in formations and shapes not conducive to anything remotely resembling wave-riding.

He looked around. The entirety of Wallaby Point Bay was utterly devoid of any other surfers. There may well have been good reason for this. Meanwhile the sun had started to come up, finally and reluctantly, not wanting any part of this ridiculous enterprise and not feeling like being blamed afterwards for enabling it by providing light to see by, thereby being guilty by association. He smiled at the sun, baring his fangs. The sun looked the other way and pretended not to notice.

‘Fine’, The Black Howler Baboon muttered to himself, ‘be like that then. See if I care. Hah!’ And he turned around and paddled ferociously into an oncoming breaking wave, carefully and cunningly ignoring a stretch of calm water right next to it.

As he emerged from the dunking he stuck his head out, shook the water out of his ears and looked ahead. And stopped in his tracks.

Right there in front of him, out of the crest of the next wave that came rolling along, a huge grey dolphin launched itself high into the air, spun around its axis lengthways twice, then flapped its tail in mid-air and performed a majestic seemingly impossible head over heel cartwheel, before tracing a rainbow-arc above the white foam and plunging head first back into the sea, in a display of such sheer dazzling acrobatic perfection that it caused the whole of the Australian Women’s Olympic Synchronised Swimming Team to pull up stumps and move to a small village in a remote corner of the Gobi Desert, never to set eyes on any body of water bigger than a cup of tea ever again.

The Baboon grinned in delight and satisfaction, turned around, pulled into the next wave right behind it, made a beautiful slow-motion drop into its pulsating racing heart and rode a breathtaking shimmering emerald green slope all the way across the bay, howling, cackling and braying fanatically every inch of the way.

This was much better than going home dry, any day of the week.



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