Great aches and crippling spasms accompany the winter winds as they hurry themselves over the hills. They hurtle along the crest like a runaway train, weaving and bobbing through the dunes before spitting sand into the water, coiling and arguing with the waves. The scars on the backs of my legs are hard and flaky, the edges raised and thick like a badly sewn seam. A careful study reveals the marks of the two hundred and ten stitches on my right leg. When the ruined skin catches on my jeans as I drag them up, I wince.
As a child I had been blown up by a Molotov cocktail, and much of the first decade of my life was spent in hospitals. Even now, marching on the spot to force blood down to my ankles is a useless exercise. Nothing stops the deep bone ache when harsh weather hits this part of my coast.
On a summer day, this ocean paints the sky and clouds into her reflection. Sand warms the feet and that warmth crawls up my skinny legs, trying to find purchase or solace. As autumn fades, unpredictable weather swirls up from every direction. The sea suspends itself like a tightly stretched silicon trampoline. Gannets tuck their wings tightly to pierce through this inhospitable skin and nail their prey with weaponised beaks. We locals watch the balls of baitfish following the northerly current. I call them glitterfish. The agitated surface between shore and horizon betrays their presence. Fat grey gulls, endangered terns and daring gannets take turns spinning, soaring and diving in a frenzy of feeding.
This little beach curves for two kilometres along the east coast of Australia. Somewhere deep in the hard sand I imagine my own two‑year‑old footprints still lingering, if only I had the nose of a dog. My ladies’ Seiko dive watch with the orange band is under this beach, along with my mother’s quarter‑carat engagement ring. To the south, tucked under the headland of spiky grasses and tough‑leaved tuckeroo trees, lie the rock pools of my childhood. Spiky sea urchins, black as pitch, roll slowly from spike to spike. We poked our fingers into the softness of sea anemones until they shut themselves to our explorations. “You’re disrespecting their private parts,” my father would say.
These were the pools where my siblings and I spent three weeks when we all caught chicken pox in the summer of 1952. Our village of forty‑three houses—shacks, really—kept us isolated there. Hardwood rectangles with tin roofs, half‑built porches, outside kitchens clinging to walls like passengers not yet on the bus. When it rained, the sound on the roof drowned everything, and we played canasta until the storm passed.
My burns were thermal, full‑thickness, and I was nine. My brother was inventing a lamp; I knocked over a bottle of methylated spirits, soaking my sandshoes and socks. When he lit the wick, the heat startled him and he dropped the lamp onto my feet. The scars do not bother me now. I wear them proudly and have even convinced American tourists they were from a shark bite.
Pain seems eternal each winter, and I search for activities that take me elsewhere in my mind. Although I was never able to do sport like other children, I became expert in fishing and surfing. I am a creature of the water. When I see the ocean, I find myself.
Right now the tides are perfect. I have rod, reel and lures, and it is time to catch a feed of fish. I head to the back beach because the wind and seas are calming after their rage. Turmoil is everywhere and this shoreline, which I love like a memorised poem, is a discourteous place. The air crackles on my hair and skin. I could be on a faraway planet. It smells of Cambrian times. Seabirds wheel high like tiny fighter jets, minuscule SR‑71s, then flay themselves through the sea’s skin. The booming swell comes and goes as I stand in a lost memory, echoes of a low incendiary growl within my ears or heart.
While I rig my twelve‑foot rod with the three‑ounce spinner, the atmospheric frenzy relays itself to the baitfish. Whitebait coil and roil outside the break in an organic, measured ballet. They have moved around from the front beach. Tailor—streamlined predator, pelagic super‑fighter—my favourite, with its glistening silver‑green and blue sides.
The spinner flicks through the glitterfish with clarity and glamour. The sand is cold, sending pain up through my shinbones. Better to be knee‑deep and numb. The water is warm to my flesh, and numb is how I need to be.
I ponder the peculiarity of my relationship with creatures of the sea. I know the deadly, the beautiful, the edible. As I cast and crank, wattles and tallowwoods pump out their final blossoms behind me. Wattlebirds clack in the dying light and the willy wagtail claims ownership of this place.
Alone here, I am charged to the eyelids. Time comes and goes in waves and pleats, like the water I stand in. Time is moving through me, not me through time. Again and again the rod tip bends, the top third of the stick arching impossibly as I reel in and set drag. They fight in streamlined glory and are dispatched and bled before their silver and blue dulls. I ache with happiness as the wind rakes through my hair and thrums its atavistic rhythm along my taut line.
Then they are gone. I have my bag limit. I stand exhausted, hands swollen, knuckles tight with salted skin and blood‑rimmed nails. Night settles.
I am a feather riding light.
