The People of the Moon

Chapter I – Agent Orange

 

I paddled out into the dark night. The water is black, the sky is black, the stars are cold white silver, and there is a rapidly diminishing sliver of moon hanging on for dear life high up above in the pre-morning sky. The full moon has been and gone, and us mob, The People Of The Moon, have followed its beck and call faithfully, like we do every month. We surf at night, because, for one, it’s exciting, special and spooky, sends shivers up and down your spine and is a challenge, and, for another, because it’s the only way we can get a wave to ourselves and beat the crowds, here at our regular surf spot. It’s a popular place and the entire world wants a piece of the action, so it seems, and so it gets flogged to within an inch of its life, with all the attendant issues of human nature rearing its ugly head and showing itself from its worst side: when it gets busy the beautiful peaceful ocean becomes a battlefield, where random characters push, shove, hustle, hassle and fight over a wave.

   So we surf at night, and as a result we have developed night vison. When we get out of the water at 6.30 in the morning, when other people start thinking about opening one eye and turn over in their bed, yawning, scratching their arses and farting, the glare of daylight is so severe that we have to wear sunglasses, a broad brimmed hat, a scarf covering most of our faces, factor 50 sunscreen three inches thick on our faces and a long overcoat that reaches down to the ground. It’s particularly challenging having showers that way, rinsing off the salt after coming out.

   On this day I paddled out, and, out on the water, bumped into my mate The Cork. Literally. I hadn’t seen him, because I couldn’t see anything. We bobbed around a bit in amicable silence, then he went to catch a wave. He struck out, looking hard over his shoulder, paddled hard, got picked, dragged downstream a bit, and slid off the back of it, missing it. His disappointment was palpable. I could feel it radiating off him across the water. I commiserated. It’s the story of my life. See a wave, paddle like a demented haemophiliac in a river full of piranhas, and, inexplicably, not succeed in getting on. Seeing another wave approach, or rather, not seeing it but sensing it with my sixth sense, my midnight water navigator sense which is located somewhere between my left big toe and my third right rib, I called out to him.

   ‘Go again, there’s one behind it!’

   Dutifully he turned his tail to me, paddled his hardest, blood, sweat and tears flying all around, and missed it again. I didn’t need to be able to understand what he was grumbling underneath his breath to know what he was saying. I looked over my shoulder in what I hoped was the vague general direction of the open ocean, and thought I could discern another shadow moving upright towards us, like a very short and very fat tyrannosaurus rex frothing around the mouth, and I called out again.

   ‘There’s another one, go again!’

   But glancing downstream towards The Cork I saw that he had turned his board back upstream and was paddling back up again, clearly having given up on the idea of catching anything other than a cold from being out in the water at night, and potentially having lost the will to live. This put him in a position where it would be impossible for him to catch a wave, so I jerked my head wildly and erratically around back to the wave just in time to see that it was just about to break on my head, clean out my ears and rinse out my sinuses, so in a move born out of desperation I turned my back to it, threw myself on my board, paddled manically and, miraculously and surprisingly, found myself being picked up almost instantly and catapulted forwards. I reacted without thinking, always the most advised course of action in a precarious situation, and jumped to my feet with all the agility, speed and grace of a ninety-five year old great-great grandmother with a walking frame, a dislocated hip and bunyons the size of watermelons, and I landed perfectly in the right spot and flew away into the unfathomable dark, home of the incurably insane.

   Got a long ride out of it, very enjoyable indeed. As I paddled back up again I pondered the vagaries of skill acquisition, and reflected upon the considerable and enviable skill displayed regular as clockwork by another one of our mates, The Reefshark. He has this uncanny ability of sitting on the water as motionless as a lame duck, balefully eyeballing a mountain of water rushing towards him with the clear intent of decapitating him and turning his great intestine into fiddle strings. Then, when the heaving boiling ocean is a fraction of a second away from smashing him between the eyes, he calmly turns around, drags his arms through the water once on the left, once on the right, and whoosh! he’s on it and away to the back of woop-woop, standing up tall and proud, grinning madly from ear to ear. If that had been me paddling for the same wave I would have taken off half an hour earlier, paddling at world record speed, and would have made it half way across the bay before being overtaken by a giant violent shower of shit that would have held me under for ten minutes before spitting me out in again in three pieces. And I would not have caught the wave.

   I have begged and pleaded with him to please explain The Secret Of The Magic Trick. I journeyed with him up to a secret mystical place up high in the mountains, where ice-cold waterfalls cascade off sheer cliffs and shaven-headed monks in yellow dresses walk around barefoot in the snow, mumbling incoherently to themselves. At first listen it appeared they were repeating over and over an ancient mantra of deep spiritual and mystical significance, handed down to The Secret Brotherhood Of Barefoot Burglars by the gods themselves in the dawn of time, to be used as a tool on their path to enlightenment and achievement of smug superiority over the rest of humanity. Upon closer investigation however it turned out that what they were really repeating over and over under their breath was ‘Jeez I’m so fucking cold why don’t they let us wear underwear here me knackers are freezing; Jeez I’m so ...’.

   The Master Reefshark halted underneath a green jade statue of some fat bloke with a gut and cauliflour ears, sitting on his arse crosslegged and looking constipated. From out of nowhere two acolytes appeared with palm fronds and started waving them above his head, presumably to try and hurry up the process of imminent hypothermia. Unaccountably soft unobtrusive Chinese-sounding ploinky-ploinky music came wafting over on the breeze. I looked around, but couldn’t see any source of music. I nodded approvingly to myself. Very appropriately mystical.

   I turned my vacant gaze up towards The Master. He glanced benevolently down at me.

   ‘Master, can I ask you something?’ I said, in a voice quavering with nervous hysteria.

   ‘Yes, Stick Insect, go ahead.’

   ‘Master, can you please tell me the Secret Of The One-Two Move?’ I trembled in trepidation. Would the Secret finally be unveiled?

   ‘Why sure, Stick Insect. It is very easy.’

   I nodded speechlessly, all ears and no kidneys.

   ‘First, you embark on your Secret Journey Of Discovery ...’

   That sounded promising.

   ‘... you will travel around the country anti-clockwise three times on your knees, going backwards ...’

   Easy, no worries.

   ‘You will learn the Ways of the Wayfaring Beach Bum ...’

   Not a problem. Been there done that.

   ‘... you will spend three weeks on top of Uluru living only on salt water and your own piss ...’

   Excellent. I do that in my spare time all the time.

   ‘... and then, when Mars lines up with Venus, Aquarius freezes over and Alpha Centauri develops a hernia ...’

   Yes! The mythological alignment of the stars! This was happening in the next few days!

   ‘... you will Sit In The Right Spot, Turn Your Tail To The Wave, And Wait For It To Pick You Up. When Your Tail Is Out Of The Hollow Of The Wave And Halfway Up The Slope, You Will Perform The Exact Number Of Two Paddle Strokes. Yeay! Verily I say To Thee, Not One, Not Three, Not Five, But Two! And you shall Catch The Wave, Stick Insect.’

   I was dumbfounded. With tears in my eyes I kissed the ground upon which he walked, gave him all my money, my car keys, my house keys and my wife, and ran away full pelt into the night.

   And now here I was. Was it time to perform the miracle trick?

   There was another dark shape bobbing up and down somewhere on the black water in front of me, as I returned from my unexpected bonus of a wave. I pulled up next to it and, peering intently into the darkness, worked out that it was my mate The Shredder.

   ‘Morning! How are ya’I said, hopefully in the right direction.

   ‘Yeah, not bad’, he replied to the back of my head. ‘Hey, look over there’ he followed on. I looked cautiously. In the past he has at times lured me into looking the wrong way while he jumps on a wave and I am wary of his wily ways. He’s a devious bastard. I stared into the dark in front of us. And right there, and the other side of the bay, an eerie red glow lay over the water.

   ‘What do you think that is?’ he asked, bemused.

   ‘I have no idea,’ I admitted.

   ‘It looks like someone is shining a really strong torch out over the water from that beach over there’, he resumed, indicating the next beach over around the corner of our rocky point.

   ‘Yes, you’re right, it’s weird isn’t it,’ I agreed.

   ‘But then ... look, it’s getting bigger!’ he exclaimed.

   I looked. It was getting bigger.

   ‘It looks ...’. He hesitated. ‘It looks ... like it’s coming up from underneath the water!’ he offered, excitedly.

   I looked carefully, at him this time. I had often had cause to contemplate the exact extent of his magic mushroom consumption. I looked back at the water in front of us. He had a point.

   ‘Yeah, it does, sort of ...’ I allowed hesitantly and grudgingly.

   ‘Hey, I know what it is!’ A glow of orange excitement started creeping over his face, which became a little bit visible now in the soft light that came off the mysterious underwater light source in front of us.

   ‘Yeah, what do you reckon it is?’ I answered. I was getting quite curious myself now.

   ‘I reckon it’s one of them newcleeya submarines, you know those ones that just cut laps around the world underwater for years and years without coming up, and no one knows where they are, ever!’ He was getting positively excited now.

   ‘Right’, I said slowly, studying him carefully out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes people with these conditions can turn violent without notice. It pays to take heed. ‘Right. You reckon?’

   ‘Oh yeah, definitely! Look, it’s getting bigger now!’ He bobbed excitedly up and down and pointed with a grubby finger.

   As he pointed at the night sky in front of us the curtain of cloud obscuring the horizon shifted and lifted, shedding light on the mystery. Literally.

   There, on the edge of the water in front of us, was the sun, rising slowly and majestically, golden and bronze, out of the shining black water.

   We blinked in miscomprehension. Must be time to go in.

 

Chapter II – Fat Arse Rock

 

I resolved to try again the next day, so bright and early, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I rocked up in the heart of the night, eager to tackle the challenge of The Magic One-Two Trick. There was no one in the carpark when I got there, so I jumped out, got into my water gear and headed down to the water with my board. There was no point in trying to scout out the water and the movement of the waves, because there was so little moon left now you couldn’t really see much of anything at all.

   I waded into the water up to my waist, laid down on my board and pulled my fingers through the water. Bioluminescent sparkles danced around my fingers in wonder and delight. I paddled around the corner of the first rocky point and sat up straight, surveying all around me. Across the bay, the lights of the town. Above, true, loyal and supremely indifferent as ever, the stars, gaseous balls of flaming liquid a billion light years away that might have burned out a million years ago and we wouldn’t know. I could feel their guiding presence in the every day humdrum mundane affairs of my unremarkable existence on here earth in a very powerful way. I wondered if today I was going to have a career-changing promotion, develop a romantic attachment to a beautiful and rich woman with no heirs or family, and travel extensively overseas, potentially after having stolen all her money. I shrugged. Time alone would tell. Meanwhile I needed to focus on the order of the day, or rather night. Studying the water around me I decided that the waves weren’t breaking very wide, no doubt due to the depth of the water of the incoming tide, the rakishly irresponsible attitude of the sand that redistributes itself on the ocean floor without even a semblance of community consultation or due process, the current in and out of the bay, and the particularly nasty juxtaposition of Uranus and Pluto, kneedeep into retrograde.

   Far better it would be, I resolved, to go a bit closer in, a bit more nearer to the rocks lining the side of the point there. That way I’d be able to catch it right at the exact, perfectly opportune breaking point, Reefshark Style, hopefully maybe even performing that elusive One-Two Magic Trick that was by now my burning ambition in life. I eyed off the distance to the rocks and sidled over a bit closer. I examined the playing field in front of me, and decided that there was plenty of room to sail around the point of the point and stay well clear of anything untoward rock-wise.

   A very wise move indeed.

   Ahead of me the water moved in a way that indicated it was ready for playtime, and so I carefully arranged myself in the exactly just right position for the Execution Of The Reefshark Manoeuvre, turned my back to the wave, fixed it with a death stare, watched it gather momentum, calculated the rapidly decreasing distance with great cunning and mathematical precision, and at exactly the right moment the whitewash smashed me in the face, knocked me flat on my board and skulldragged me out in front in a straight line.

   Towards a big rock sitting there.

   Now this rock has been there for a while. For about 250 million years, in fact, and it’s probably fair to say that, over that time, it’s gotten quite used to sitting there, quietly and unobtrusively minding its own business. It has seen eons come and go, witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, attended the birth and demise of the megafauna, stood by as humans came to Australia and proceeded to meticulously put it on fire, kill everything that moved, cut down all the trees, dig great big holes in the ground, plough over the top soil and let it blow away, dump radioactive waste in its rivers, build skyscrapers on shifting quicksand and elect stupid people to overpaid public positions. It has seen new stars come into being, go supernova and burn out, and has seen constellations form and disband after failing to score number one hits. In all that time it has stood there stoically, in and out of the water depending on the ebb and flow of ice ages, the tilt of the planet’s axis and the orientation of its magnetic field, and it has never done as much as shrug. It has faced the onslaught of time and weather heroically and stoically, with nary a blink of an eye, inscrutable, imperturbable and immovable. Human concerns are so far below its contempt they don’t even register. Sometimes, when it wakes up in the morning, it still looks around for its favourite dinosaurs before its brain catches up with its memory.

   And that rock moves for no man.

   It’s got a name. It’s a popular rock for people to come and sit on and watch the spectacle of surfers smashing into each other unfold below them. Often times people will take photos or fly drones over our heads, selling all recorded data to ASIO and miscellaneous overseas interfering organisations. On account on its exquisite suitability as a rock to provide first row seating for a wide array of spectators, it is called Fat Arse Rock, due to the shape and size of the anatomy of the lion share of people who choose to find a seat there.

   Fat Arse Rock loomed ominously in front of me, rising out of the black water like a prehistoric water monster with PMT, bad breath and throbbing haemorrhoids. I sped towards it a hundred miles an hour. So I opened my mouth to give a maximum amount of salt water easy and unrestricted access to my gut and lungs, and gave vent to my dismay in that time-honoured ancient expression that is as eloquent as it is poignant.

   ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhheeeeeeeeehhhhhuuuurrrrfffffuuuuuuck!’

   I was caught in the whitewash without any way of moving out of it, and in the blink of an eye the rock was within headbutting distance. My life flashed before my eyes as I prepared to die. It was short and boring. So, because I could not possibly face the prospect at dying already now before ever having done anything interesting or worthwhile yet, at the last minute I took a deep breath, consisting of no more than seventy percent seawater, abandoned ship like a true captain, leaving his crew to the mercy of the Kraken, and dived sideways away from the rock, pulling hard with my arms, heading deep down towards the safety of the soft sand, and swam underwater off to the far side and away from that rock as far and as fast as I could. It worked. I avoided collision and certain death, maiming, dismemberment and embarrassment, and resurfaced one legrope length away from the rock. I stuck my head out, spat out half of the Pacific Ocean and looked around me in frenzied panic for my board, my most prized possession, my faithful and trusty companion in my surfing misadventures.

   And there it sat, in all its glory. High and mighty on top of Fat Arse Rock. At a jaunty forty-five degree angle, with only its tail still in the water.

   It didn’t look good.

   So with a sinking feeling I yanked on the legrope. My board slid off the rock with a scraping scratching agonising sound reminiscent of the piercing shrieking birth wails of the Greater Antarctic Albatross when they crack the eggshell, stick their head out and find that they’re hungry, they’re cold, and one of their family has just shat on their heads.

   I caught my precious board, wrapped my arms around my poor mistreated and abused darling, and launched the both of us into the water, away from the rock and the surging backwash around it. We made it over to the shallows, and there, by the light of a non-existent moon, I ran my fingers over the impact zone, the nose that had smashed head-on into that rock at full pelt.

   Hmm.

   It felt decidedly crumbly. Bits of flaky fibreglass came away in my hands. Not a good sign.

   I decided there was nothing I could do about it there and then in the wet dark, so I shrugged, gave my board a hug and a kiss, apologised, and turned around and went back out again to try and catch some waves.

   The earth moved and the sun came up, eventually at long last, and some of my mates turned up. We caught a few waves, taking it in turns, then sat there and waited. All of a sudden opportunity knocked right in front of us, and within a heartbeat I spun around, shouted to my mate Chief Switchfoot ‘Go for this one!’, paddled far more than two times, and jumped to my feet on the face of the wave.

   Only to, within two seconds, be virtually intercepted by Switchfoot’s board, rising up underneath me like the Titanic that changed its mind, and stopping about two centimetres from the side of my board. I heard him shout something above the roar of the water behind us and had just enough time to think ‘this board doesn’t really need more bark taking off’, when right there in front of us, paddling back up again after what was no doubt a satisfying ride, was our mate The Shredder, him of the Optical Delusion and high magic mushroom consumption. A look of terror mixed with profound disappointment appeared on his face and I could tell that, he too, had seen his life flash before his eyes and had found it short, boring and uninspiring.

   At the last minute Chief Switchfoot executed a masterful switchback to the left, thereby burying himself nose-deep into the whitewash, never to be seen again, and I veered off to the right, and poor old Shredder found himself slipping right between the two of us with millimetres to spare on either side, perfectly unscathed except for a suspicious brown patch towards the rear of his wetsuit.

   It had all happened in a matter of split seconds and was gone before I hardly even realised what had happened, and so, determined to make the most of it, I leaned into the wave, pushed my back foot back and front foot forwards, and turned into the face of the wave and up it. Got to the top, then turned around and slid back down it. Back into the hole, another bottom turn, and back up again. And back down again. And again and again and again.

   The wave petered out at the far side of the bay and I fell into the water, elated. I might not have been able to perform the Reefshark One-Two, but that had definitely very nearly been proper shredding, and it felt amazing.

   Now, having the light of day to shed a bit of clarity on matters, I turned my board over and examined the collision damage properly. There was a few more holes there than there used to be, a few rougher edges here and there. All in all it wasn’t too bad. There was some life in the old girl yet. We would live to see another day, her and me.

 

Chapter III – Shady Business

 

I rocked up again in the dead of night and waded out into the water by myself, more determined than ever to have another crack at that elusive Master Trick. In my mind’s eye I could see the mystical place in the frozen mountains where I was privileged to receive that Ancient And Timeless Wisdom, and in my mind’s ear, wherever that is, I could hear His Master’s Voice, reiterating His Words Of Wisdom.

   ‘Remember, Stick Insect, there is only one spot to be on the wave.’

   ‘Yes, Master.’

   ‘And it’s mine. So piss off and stay out of it.’

   ‘Yes, Master.’

   I glided out onto the dark rolling water as smoothly as a cash converter manager swindling a newly-wed bride out of her wedding ring for next to nothing. Smashed through a few sets on the way out, always a fine portent of things to come. The waves were looking promising.

   Off to my one side was The Cork, silent presence in the night. Ahead out in front, swallowed up by the anonymous darkness, was the unmistakable silhouette of The Shredder, hugging the very front point very closely and doing battle with two shapes who had unexpectedly and uninvitedly crashed our party in the blackness. He couldn’t see who they were but that wasn’t going to stop him from fighting them for every wave that was going to come along. The front point is often likened to Singapore: it is the scene of horrific battles with endless casualties on all sides, and, and this is the important bit, always ends in defeat. Usually by about three minutes past six on a weekend morning there are so many people out there vying for a wave that a spectator standing on Fat Arse Rock beholding them would not be able to see the water through the maze of broken boards and bleeding heads.

   And on my other side was no one other than The Reefshark, Occult Magician Of Seawater, Bacon-And-Egg-Rolls, and other things Salty. I caught a wave in a satisfying manner, though not admittedly in the hard sought and long awaited Magic One-Two Trick fashion, and paddled back up again to the general vicinity of where I thought might be a good spot to sink without a trace. As I pulled up the Cork dropped into a wave and skooted off into the middle distance, which, in the dark, was about three metres. All of a sudden, just as he disappeared from view and just before I stopped to sit up on my board, there off to my right hand side, where the Cork had sat mere seconds earlier, a shape appeared. Under the water. Not a surfer. It was long, sleek and black, and at least three metres long. It flashed right in front of my board, less than half a metre from the front of my board, and I watched its silhouette, clearly visible underwater in the pale failing moonlight, dart off to the left front of me. Seconds later I heard it break the surface of the water with a soft splashing sound, confirming that indeed I had not imagined it.

   I sat bolt upright. Bloody hell. That was potentially bad news. A Visitor.  Something that shape and that size, moving like that, can only be one of two things. The Dog Of The Sea, or The Wolf Of The Sea. The dog doesn’t bite. The wolf does. I looked around, left and right, spying for the tell-tale signs. The shape and size of the triangular fin that would poke out of the water sooner or later. The way it moved its body: side to side, or up and down?

   The next few minutes were tense. I scanned the water. When the Cork returned I informed him of the sighting. We glanced around and kept ourselves metaphorically on our toes. better to be alert.

   Then before we know it a body of water arranged itself in a perfect line in front of us and there, moving with the quicksilver grace of someone who doesn’t need to think about what he’s doing because he knows how to do it bloody well inside out and upside down, was the Reefshark, him of the Secret Magic One-Two Trick, and he was on his feet and carving, coming towards us as inevitable and as pointless as an election. We calculated his trajectory carefully, deduced that we were not in his way and stayed put, watching him with the envy of the hopelessly clueless, when right there in front of us, a few metres off to the side, the surface of the water broke and a huge black sleek pointed body launched itself into the night sky, catapulting off the face of the Reefshark’s wave, rising high above the water, flipping its tail three times and landing back in the water with a deafening clap that would have been heard by the people buried in the town cemetery and would have displaced enough water to break through the mountains, flood the inland and turn Alice Springs into a seaside holiday resort.

   A dolphin.

   My relief was measurable on the scale of Richter. The presence of a dolphin there indicated that in all probability that rogue shape gliding underneath the water so close to me was a dolphin as well, presumably the same one. Sure enough, five minutes later he returned, having exhausted the wave that he shared with the Reefshark, and he came up for a breath of air not far in front of me, for all intents and purposes another surfer returning to the line-up. They are the original surfer, they will ride a wave and jump out and over and in front of it for what seems to be nothing else than sheer pleasure, and because they can.

   A few more people came out, and we sat companionably on the water, bobbing up and down, passing the time of day, shooting the breeze. We lined up, took it in turns, shared waves and shrieked with mad laughter whenever someone stacked it in a comical fashion, which is all the time every time.

   I had had a fair few rides and they’d been good and satisfying, but I had so far failed miserably in executing the much sought-after and longed for One-Two Reefshark Manoeuvre. Then, sometime after the end of the night and before the beginning of the daytime, there in that twilight space when light and time move in slow motion, playing hide-and-seek inside of the shadows and clouds and swirling and twirling around between the lifting and lilting surface of the sea, and the growing expanse of golden coloured sky, a wave arrived in front of me. And it was my turn.

   I eyed it off, suspiciously and appraisingly. The Wise Words of Master Reefshark echoed in the vast empty space of my head ‘there is only one spot to be on a wave’. I gauged its progress, estimated its speed, calculated its trajectory. Moved forwards, closer to the cliff face that had the other day led me to crash into Fat Arse Rock. Paddled a little bit, one eye on the wave, shifted a little bit to this side, that side. Then stopped. This would have to be it. As best as I could tell, to the best of my ability, this was The Sweet Spot. The ideal place to be. Just outside of reach of the backwash of the rocks, well inside the edge of the sandbank under the water, that would cause the wave to break. I sat still and held. Lined up the wave. It approached, unavoidable like a derailed train with a driver that’s gone to read the paper on the loo. I stopped myself from moving, sat there poised like a hunter stalking his prey, which I do at other times. Is hunting a wave any different from hunting an animal? In the surf there’s usually less blood and guts involved, although on a particularly busy and nasty day it could get close. I held my breath and watched, scrutinised, squinted my eyes into two little slits of concentration.

   Then, at what I judged to be the exact right moment, I pushed down with my chest on the board, felt the tail being lifted up, reached out in slow motion with my left arm, dragged it through the water in an unhurried way, lifted up my right arm. did the same thing, felt the board begin to glide and in one un-premeditated move jumped to my feet, leaned forward, pushed down hard with my front foot, leaned sideways, skidded into the bottom turn and flew away, off with the fairies, all the way down the long length of that wave.

   I had done it. I had successfully performed the Reefshark One-Two Magic Trick From Hell.

   I lifted my arms up to sky, triumphantly, and a huge smile broke out over my face. I looked down at the wave beneath me, looked back at the bubbles rising and frothing in the wall behind me, and thought ‘this is the most beautiful thing in the world’.