Barry Kanaiaupuni
Kassia Meador
Belinda Baggs
After work we drive up Highway 1, racing the waning sun. The hills are brown and the pumpkins ripe and the ocean a rich blue glass. Wind blows offshore and the crisp air hints at winter marching from the north. Leaves hang yellow and orange on the trees and swirl in vortices on the ground.
We arrive at the beach. The waves are good. Nobody out. We slide into wetsuits that are too tattered for the coming winter, but we’re cheap and broke and want to squeeze another year from the neoprene. We enter the ocean and feel the looming solstice in the cold dense water.
The sun sets as we reach the lineup. Hungry for waves before darkness, we scramble for whatever shoals on the sandbar. We’re not picky and we’re rewarded with a steady stream of peaks.
Snug Cove
The house in Toby’s much creased photo stood high amidst a grove of stunted Casuarinas and had its foundations buried in soft white sand, and the three dogs that lived in the shelter under there filed out head to tail when he came out from the house to stand on the verandah on that first morning.
A sombre tribunal of inspection.
The two bitches sat by the bottom step as the bigger male trotted up to the verandah and thrust his brutally scarred snout into Toby’s hand.
His Grandfather Tom, sitting in the sun on an ancient wooden bench with a russet coloured cat asleep by his side, was rebinding the top eyelet of a long black cane fishing rod. The cat had an ear missing and it slowly opened one golden eye to observe the trespassing hound.
‘ That’s Big Alf come up to say hullo and the other two are Betty and Bess, they’re sisters, ‘ said the old man with a smile, pleased to see the unexpected welcome from the big dog who had always remained wary around strangers.
‘ Betty’s about to have pups and she can get a little moody these days, best leave her be. ‘
The little boy’s hand scratched at Alf’s broad head as his eyes roamed around this new place. There was so much more here than was in the photograph.
Below him a strip of grass fell away onto a narrow beach that bordered a wide and still lagoon. A long line of high dunes stretched away on the far side and a muted and unending rumble over there told him that the mysterious ocean was very near.
Stretching away from both sides of the old house, and rooted into the pure white sands of the lagoon was the coastal forest. Its first rank of trees all stunted and bentback from the weight of the constant south-easterlies that blew throughout summer. In the deeper foliage, and invisible to him at first, were noisesome flocks of parrots and cockatoos climbing about the branches in search of seedpods and nectar.
The only birds he was familiar with at Beaudesert were the melancholy crows.
Now all the dogs were around him and under the urging of their bumping and boisterous good humour Toby sprinted down and onto the beach and in a moment he was running along the hardpacked sand of the lagoon edge, chasing the dogs as they in turn chased the seabirds.
The Duke
Layne Beachley - Cape Solander - pic Morris
Jakarta 2007
Beyond in the dark the river flows in a sluggard ooze toward the southern seas, running down out of the rainflattened corn and petty crops and riverloam gardens of upcountry landkeepers, grating along like bonedust, afreight with the past, dreams dispersed in the water someway, nothing ever lost.
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
First Vintage Edition, 1992. Page 4
