The Stone of Destiny

The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The swell was supposed to be following suit by getting bigger and stronger, but apparently no one had told it so, and it was lagging behind. So while the wind was positively howling from out of the east the swell was lacklustre and limp. We couldn’t really see anything as we struggled down the steps to the sand, the quarter moon was hiding its pretty face behind a thick blanket of angry black cloud, whipped and driven along at an alarming rate by the easterly. But nothing was going to stop us, and if we couldn’t find any waves out there we were just going to float around a bit, get wet and enjoy being outside.

   We walked out along the rocky shore towards the far end of the headland, heading for the little bay that sat there and looked out onto the mighty Pacific Ocean. Leaving the sand behind we went to pick our way through the rocks separating the near and the far beach, and found that the tide had come in in force and with a vengeance: where usually there was an easily negotiable sandy track there was now nothing but surging boiling white foam washing knee-high over the black rocks. We balanced on one foot and hopped and lunged and strode and clambered, and had ample opportunity for perfecting the coordinated and targeted fall: the wind got underneath, around and behind our longboards, wrapped its teeth around them, snatched and jerked them up and down, this way and that, turning them into sails that propelled us in any number of novel, unexpected and unwanted ways, and it was all we could do to fall in what appeared to be vaguely the right direction. We splashed through the water of the sea, waves breaking against our legs, felt our way through the dark with our toes, leaving a not unreasonable amount of skin behind, and eventually ended up on the sandy beach of our destination.

   A couple of the crew had turned up in the dark, shaken their heads at our folly and returned to their beds without touching their boards, but three of us had persisted and were now striking out onto the black water of the bay: the Snakecatcher, the Baboon and The Roman. As soon as we paddled out into the chop the whistling wind grabbed our boards by the head and spun them around, as if to say ‘that’s where you’ll be going, you miserable piss-ants, because I bloody well say so’. Not to be outdone by a bit of hot and cold air wafting around randomly I put my head down and pushed out, till I got into a position to catch a wave. I turned around, and as I lined up the roller coming at me I realised with that sinking feeling that, all good intentions notwithstanding, the wind had carefully and conscientiously lined me up with the very place where I didn’t want to be: dead in front of the rocks we had just scrambled over, at the rocky shore in between the two sandy beaches. It is home to a great number of unusual and attractive rocks of high intelligence and enigmatic behaviour, the subject of many a David Attenborough documentary and several PhD theses on the Emotional Inscrutability Of Granite Faces. Chief among those is one great big dirty bastard of a thing that sticks out head and shoulders above the rest, and acts like an igneous intrusive reverse homing pigeon: no matter what position in the water, time of day, political persuasion, religion or identity, anyone passing within ten miles from it will end up on top of it. Due to its unflappable and unwavering unavoidability it has been named The Stone Of Destiny, and in the past I have whiled away many a carefree and joyful hour happily disentangling myself from it.

   This time however I thought to myself ‘Hah! I know what to do now! You won’t catch me this time, you fucker’, and as the wave rose up behind me I paddled, jumped and rode straight towards it, as inevitably as a federal politician towards a kick-back from a mining company. I carefully, scientifically and mathematically calculated my trajectory, and when I judged I was safely miles away from its clutches I jumped off, to paddle sideways and make my escape.

   Of course the best-laid plans come to naught, and the gusting near-gale force wind and the surging high tide conspired to obliterate my carefully calculated get-away zone, and I ended up smack bang on top of the rock. Who would have thought. So I swore and cursed, thoughtfully and with conviction, extricated myself from a jumble of rock, squirt and legrope, copped three breakers in the face and eventually managed to get out towards the open water.

   There was no way I was going to repeat what had happened the previous day, when I spent hour after hour crashing into the bloody thing, and so I turned my back on the rock section and settled for the open water area. My mate The Snakecatcher was sitting there, biding his time and stickybeaking around, and The Roman was off on another planet doing his own thing a bit further over.

   We figured the sun must have come up because it got noticeably lighter, a strange, unexpected and most unusual phenomenon in the morning, often linked to the development of Aurora Australis, the many-coloured lights in the sky found at near-Antarctic latitudes such as Sydney and Melbourne. We couldn’t see any sun behind the banks of clouds, let alone a potentially glorious sunrise. Instead, as one solitary friend of ours braved the scouring wind and surging tide and paddled out towards us, the clouds opened up and emptied a year’s worth of saved up water over our heads. Our friend The Crouching Tiger, who is not scared of a bit of gale-force driving horizontal rain and who has, indeed, recently taken off on a solo surfing road trip around Greenland equipped with an Akubra, gum boots and a black poodle, joined us, and the three of us huddled together in the deluge.

   In spite of the wind and the water, both below and above us, throwing their weight around and chucking a tantrum like a five-year old who’s been told they’re not allowed to drink brandy and smoke cigars until they’re at least eight and they’re out of rehab, there was little actual wave action happening. The tide was high, the water was full and fat, and the swell wasn’t breaking anywhere except in one place. At The Stone Of Destiny. There was no getting away from that fucking thing.

   The Tiger and myself had a few half-hearted attempts at catching peripheral slop, but the conclusion was foregone and inevitable. As our mate The Snakecatcher pointed out, the only way to catch a wave was to sit right next to The Stone, wait for the swell to stand up hard against it, and then use the suction and surge of the backwash to be pushed forwards and into the drop. Obligingly, like the gentleman that he thinks he is, he kindly showed us, patting, hugging and kissing The Stone, and then, sure enough, vamooshing straight forwards with the power of regurgitated and recycled wave strength, flying straight down that line with his shirt tails flapping in the breeze.

   The Tiger and myself looked at each other. We wriggled our eyebrows. We furrowed our brows pensively. We nodded sagely, picked our ears thoughtfully and scratched our arses with feeling. That looked easy. No worries.

   For the next half hour we took it in turns trying to sit on top of The Stone, so close we could hear the squirts, lichen and algae whisper gossip, talking about us behind our backs, pointing at us with microscopic little rude fingers and pissing themselves laughing, and engaged in some memorable, remarkable and inventive wipe-outs, near-misses, nose-dives and face-plants.

   Then, when it was my turn, I inched just that bit closer to the rock, close enough to touch it, caress it tenderly and tell it how much I hated it, and when the wall rose up behind me I paddled my guts out, trying to catch the Fabled Surge. I teetered on the knife-edge of the foam line, and felt that sinking feeling that announces to the unaware and oblivious central nervous system that it’s about to go for a spin in the washing machine, when I looked to my left and saw, right there, a pit opening up, hollow, inviting, empty, stretching its arms open wide to welcome me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. I looked to my right and saw the shoulder reforming and fattening out with the promise of an ignominious slide down the back of the wave, and the bitter aftertaste of another fuck-up. So in desperation and with the courage born of not having a clue what you’re doing I half rolled and threw myself to the left hand side, and to my amazement, surprise, bafflement and relief I became weightless, dropped into the hole, and jumped up with the sort of fluid graceful movement often performed by urangutans after eating too much fermented fruit. In an instant I was catapulted out of that corner by the resurging backwash from The Stone, and I went hurtling down a wall of green that stretched out ahead of me into infinity and that I rode all the way into the beach.

   Perfect.

   One up on The Stone. Take that, sucker. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

   Score: Me 1, Stone 0. Very good.

   Stoked, over the moon and bloody well pleased with myself I landed on the sand, turned around and headed back out again immediately.

   I pushed and heaved and moaned and groaned my way back out through the shorebreak, the gale and the driving rain, and after what felt like three hours’ worth of paddling finally got back to within about thirty metres from my friends when I saw them suddenly spin around in apparent great haste and with big long strokes make a beeline for me and the shore behind me, gesticulating wildly, flapping their arms around, shouting on top of their voices and putting a hand upright on their head, dorsal fin-style.

   Shark.

   One of the Men In Grey Suits.

   I see-sawed my board into the other direction, intercepted them, and, as we paddled at considerably more than a leisurely pace, I got the story.

   They had been sitting next to The Stone, working out catapulting tactics, when a shark had appeared from out of the deep, and bumped The Snakecatcher’s board.

   That’s not usually a good sign.

   It means they’ve noticed you, are interested in you and may well consider trying to see if you’re edible.

   It had then swum directly crossways underneath the board of The Tiger, whose complexion had now begun to resemble the colour of her board, i.e. green.

   ‘But it was only a little one’, she said, ‘silver and grey, passing beneath me.’

   ‘How little?’

   ‘Hard to say. A metre and a half, two metres, maybe’.

   Not big, but big enough to be annoying, in a biting and losing-legs sort of a way.

   It had then swum away back out towards the bay, and, while The Tiger sat there and watched, eyes bulging and mouth wide open with two lines of spit gently dribbling out, it had chucked a u-ee and had come straight back at them.

   Not real great as far as shark behaviour goes. It usually means they’re coming back for seconds and want to play for keeps.

   No wonder my friends had been paddling in earnest, with determined, focussed, serious and heavily concentrated looks of dire constipation on their faces. I adopted an identical facial expression and we bailed out, not stopping until we reach the sand of the beach and the safety of Terror Firma.

   Time for a cup of tea, debrief and some mutual counseling. We’d be back the next day.