When Dennis sat to a halt, he crossed the reins on the horse’s wither, pulled his scrunched-up packet of Drum out of his top pocket and rolled a smoke.
A stop at “The Clearing” had been part of his routine for years, something he did with young horses on their first ride out of the yards.
“Reckon a young’un is doing alright if I can let the reins go and roll a smoke.”
We’d all heard it when we joined him on one of those rides.
It was a nice place to stop.
A grassy clearing hidden in a eucalypt forest you’d never know was there. It was perched atop a private beach that you could only access by climbing down a goat’s track that inched its way through the rocks and scrub on the drop off. Not really a track, just an eroded creek bed snaky as hell in summer and slippery at the slightest drop of rain.
There was a tumble-down old shack some hippies had built back in the seventies that had a collection of round, yellow and white polystyrene fishing net buoys hanging from a pergola made from second-hand timber, all of different sizes, and painted different colours, and a path made of house bricks with grass and dandelions growing up in the cracks. The shack had a round front window with a metre-wide, tiled windowsill on the inside that was strewn with pillows—a great place to read. The rest of the world just didn’t exist.
You could look out that window disappear into the Pacific—the largest and deepest ocean on the planet, 155 square kilometres of deep blue punctuated by a smattering of small islands and coral atolls.
Dennis hadn’t seen Jay in a few years, not since he’d left home to follow his dream on the professional surfing circuit.
As he dragged on his durrie, casually checked the horse’s ears to see how relaxed he was, he noticed Jay paddling out to the breakpoint about a hundred metres off the rocks. He’d seen his nephew grow up, from a skinny little goofy-footed grommet, into a wiry twenty-two-year-old. He had always been short for his age, but there was no mistaking the smooth, powerful action as he paddled out, rolled effortlessly under the whitewater near the break zone, and bobbed up again, pulled his twin fin underneath himself and immediately resumed paddling as if there hadn’t been an interruption. Stroke, stroke, stoke…his feet, slightly off the board, alternating with small kicks to counterbalance each stroke. Left stroke, right foot kick; right stroke, left foot kick–each movement in time with his paddling.
He looked strong and assured, Dennis thought, exactly what he had grown into—a pro. Jay hadn’t cracked the big time yet with wins in the major tournaments, but he was getting there.
And the contrast with the awkward, cumbersome strokes of his dad and their old mate, Bill, both now in their fifties, was more than obvious.
“The Clearing” wasn’t really what you might call a known surf spot. Even the local crew at Camel Rock weren’t aware of it. You could only access this spot by driving through private property, and the beach itself was rugged, dotted with the Devonian rhyolite and Bunga sandstone boulders the nearby Mimosa Rocks National Park had got its name from. The twisted and folded rocks were both close in and offshore, and back in 1863 they’d claimed the passenger steamer, the M.S. Mimosa. Like the rest of the far south coast of New South Wales, it is wild.
Besides all that, “The Clearing” didn’t produce a tidy wave worth riding. The surf was chaotic, the waves appeared to come from different directions at the same time, then they’d break and turn into a mash of whitewater. There was no clean take-off, no extended shoulder for a surfer to play with.
It was a mess.
But once every few years, when a big ground swell was pumping out of the north, with thousands of miles of unhindered travel across the Pacific behind them, monstrous grumblers would suddenly stand up on a rock shelf millions of years old off the northern end of the beach at “The Clearing” and produce a powerful, but ridable wave for those brave enough to take on the challenge.
It was a left-hander, ten foot plus to the lip, dark and ominous.
When the wave broke it didn’t just politely tumble over, it crashed violently into the shallow water on the rock shelf and formed a pipe large enough for a man to stand up in. It was tight inside, but if you could survive the frantic freefall of the take off, and carve a deep bottom turn before the lip smashed a few hundred kilos of water onto your back, you’d get spat out of that pipe, engulfed in spray to cut a line across a smooth, wall of water held vertical by an onshore breeze that seemed to have “come and tear me apart” written all over it in deep, dark blue letters.
If anything, the swell seemed to be getting bigger, pushing twelve to fifteen foot now, and Jay just sat up on his board in the deeper water just off the breakpoint, rising and falling as the swells passed.
Dennis watched him checking out how the waves were breaking, nutting out a plan of attack.
He was admiring Jay’s patience and smiled as he watched his brother and Bill getting pounded. They’d been caught inside and had to roll under walls of surging whitewater over and over again. He knew they’d be exhausted by the time they reached the safety of the deeper water outside.
After ten minutes or so, Jay burst into action.
He suddenly laid flat on his board, took half a dozen deep strokes, to reposition himself into the break zone, and took off on the biggest wave of the morning so far.
Dennis watched as Jay got to his feet as soon as the wave picked him up., and then free-fall, his toes barely in contact with his board, as the lip began to peel over.
A second later, he was gone, covered by the pipe of water grinding into the shallows on the rock shelf, and then, just as quickly, he emerged, all but hidden by the spray spitting out of the pipe. He dropped to the bottom of the wave before carving a deep, determined line across the wall of water in front of him, then cut sharply to the top of the wave, his board vertical, before ripping it around in a re-entry to surf straight down the shoulder, cut a deep bottom turn, climb and then re-enter again.
He did this two, three, four times on each wave before calmly flicking off the back and paddling back out for another take-off.
In fact, Jay had caught three waves before his dad and Bill had even wiped out on their first.
And this went on for two or was it three hours.
Constant.
He’d got into a steady rhythm, and the waves just kept pumping.
Take off, free-fall, disappear, re-emerge the fingertips on his left-hand trailing through the vertical wall of water. He’d carve deep lines across the dark wall in countless manoeuvres Dennis didn’t even know the names of then flicked out the back of the wave and immediately repositioned to the take-off point and do it all again, not once falling, not once even uncertain of his footing.
It was simply masterful.
As the tide fell, the waves increased in power as they broke onto the shallower water on filling the air with thunder and sending a grumbling vibration through the ground that could even be felt at the top of the cliff.
Dennis had become so enthralled with what he was witnessing he’d slipped off his horse, tied the young mare to a tree, and sat down cross-legged to watch in awe.
Steve and Bill had long given up the fight, but Jay just kept at it.
Now, the take-off was even more critical, faster than it had been, but Jay adjusted instinctively angling his take off to reduce the free-fall and ensure he could get through the pipe without being clipped by the peeling lip.
Now, though, the time he was hidden in the pipe increased.
Dennis sat up to attention as the time passed, worried the wave might have just become too mean to navigate. He could see how shallow the shelf had become, and he tried not to think about the jagged barnacles hidden threateningly beneath the surface.
He counted.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight,
Nine.
Then, just as he’d done all morning, Jay flew out the end of that pipe only this time, it looked like he was travelling at a thousand miles an hour.
EEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAA!!!
Dennis was shaking his head dumbstruck by what he’d just seen.
He stood up clapping and didn’t stop as Jay paddled to the deeper water for a safe return to shore.
He popped to his feet, slipped his board under his arm like it was just a part of him and jogged across the sand, and bounded up the track to the clearing.
He emerged from the bush shaking his hair with a big smile on his face.
He looked up and caught Dennis’ smile.
“I’m ready”, was all he said.
“I’m gunna give it a fair dinkum crack this season.”