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As he rounded Dolphin Point, Adam stopped for a moment to take in the classic scene. Spread out before him was a vision of heaven. Granite Bay glistened in all its magnificence and was highlighted by line after line of clean, eight-foot swells wrapping around the point from the east. As he marvelled at this scene, he remembered a picture he once saw, a long time ago, on the side of a camper van. He realised, there and then, that the scene he was looking at right then was identical to the one in that picture, in every detail. He shook his head in amazement and thought,
‘How could she have done that? How could she have painted this day, this very moment, on the side of that van?’
He then thought to himself that he was beyond being amazed. There had been so many things that had happened, so many impossible things, that he was becoming numb to them all. These days he just experienced them and moved on without trying to understand or explain them.
He took a drink from his water bottle, refocussed his mind on the grinding barrels and continued his walk along the narrow foot trail that led around the perimeter of Granite Bay towards the point.
It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday, April 20, 2005. The day was stinking hot and walking along the track, and over the boulders along the shoreline, was like walking on an electric hotplate. He hadn’t worn a pair of shoes for five years and the only time he put on a pair of sandals was when he went shopping or ‘taking care of business’. As a result, his feet had toughened up so much that he no longer felt any heat beneath them. This was just one example of how his body had changed and adapted to its new environment. To look at him now would leave you disbelieving that he was the same person from five years before. His skin was a deep, dark-brown colour and his body was lean and muscular. His eyes burned with a ferocity for life and maintained a constant, sharp, razor-edge focus on the waves that broke along the five classic points of Noosa.
In the last five years, since he had arrived there, he had not missed one day of perfect, point surf. His life beat to the rhythms of the swells, the winds and the tides.
Everything revolved around these elements of nature.
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He arrived at the top of the steep, narrow trail, which led down the side of the precipitous cliff to the small beach hidden amongst the boulders, midway out along the point. He knew, by heart, every tree root and every stable rock that acted as a step for him. He negotiated his way down with the balance of a tightrope walker. Once on the beach, he took a few more big swigs of water then placed the bottle in its special spot, amongst the rocks, where it would be in the shade all afternoon and stay cool for him when he finished his session. He strapped his leg rope around his right ankle, picked up his longboard and absorbed the scene.
He was in the fifty-seventh year of his life. Over the last thirty or so years he had evolved a very personal, singular perception of his reality. Everything he saw and sensed, was her. Everything he was not, was her. Everything he moved in, was her. She was alive and she could change into whatever she wanted. She had feelings just like anything else that is alive has feelings. She could love and she could get upset, very upset. She could be Granite Bay on a perfect day or she could be a rat hole of a prison cell where no light entered. She could be a bullet. It was up to her. It all depended on how she felt about things because she was alive and she had feelings. She deserved respect and sometimes she demanded it. She was everything that he was not, including, as he discovered through his personal experiences, his physical body and its brain. She was the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, and she was all-powerful Time which destroys all things. She was his universe. And the way he understood things now, it was she who was mortal, destined to die and disintegrate around him, and it was he who was immortal, existing within her while she was alive, and when she died, it was his destiny to continue growing and grow a new universe and live within her until she died. And this happened over and over, forever, like a palm tree losing an old leaf and growing a new one.
He loved his universe like nothing else and he let her know it. He thanked her daily for being what she was and he thanked God for making her, and him, and for everything that was. Then he went surfing.
As the liquid sets rolled through the bay, he watched the young surfers race the huge, long-walled barrels, sometimes disappearing from view only to reappear again further down the line. He was waiting for a lull. He stood in waist-deep water focussing his gaze out to sea, looking for a break in the swells. When he saw one, he lay on his board and exploded in a burst of paddling energy. He made it out about three quarters of the way when the next set ground through. The waves hit him hard and caused him to roll
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under, nearly ripping his surfboard out of his hands. But he hung on through the violent turbulence, holding his breath, came up on the other side, righted himself and powered on until he made it out all the way through the break. Once there, he could relax a little and paddle out to the take-off in a more leisurely manner, studying the huge, pitching barrels on the way out. There were about thirty surfers in the water that day. Two thirds of them were mostly spectators, numbed by the intimidating power and speed of the massive waves. The rest were active participants, unafraid and experienced, searching for the barrel, the place of highest energy and greatest danger. The place where, some said, time stood still.
He caught many waves that afternoon, some as good as any he had ever ridden. He felt so attuned to his universe that he no longer took the waves, he received them. He no longer competed for them with the other surfers. He waited until his wave came to him, and when it did, he turned and casually paddled into the wall of water and allowed it to pick him up and propel him along its face at lightning speed, chasing him with its menacing barrel all the way to the end of the ride.
He recognised her in the waves he rode and he understood how she played with him in a game of harmony. It was a game she invented, a game to be played between her nature and his spirit.
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As the sun slowly drifted towards the westerly horizon and its golden light began to reflect off the curved surfaces of the long, liquid walls, he noticed how, one by one, the surfers began leaving the water. Before long, there were only ten left. He rode another speeding wall and paddled back out. When he got back to the take-off, there were only five left.
There was about half an hour of sunlight remaining in the day, the surf was classic and everyone was leaving? He looked around and scratched his head. What was going on?
Normally, no one left until it was nearly pitch dark, way after sunset. A subtle, strange feeling began to permeate through his body and his mind. He looked out to sea and saw the next set smashing over the rocks on the tip of the point. He looked around and saw that now there was no one else there to go for the waves. He had no time to think. He paddled towards the approaching wall, placed himself into position, turned his board and pushed himself into the rising swell. As his surfboard picked up speed and began to plane, he stood up and, while still crouching slightly, bent like a bow, dropped straight down the
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near-vertical wall of glass. As he sped out onto the flat in front of the huge wave, he leaned into his bottom turn, straightened his body and released all his energy in time with all the forces and kinetics of his precious, beloved universe. Coming out of the turn, he shot out onto the face, climbing high for the long, critical section he was about to negotiate. As he climbed to the top of the wave, he caressed the pitching curl with his right hand and just before he risked sliding into freefall, due to being too high on a hollowing wall, he leaned back on his board, placing his weight over his fins, flicked the board slightly down the face, gaining incredible speed, and set himself up to enter the hollow mystery hidden beneath the pitching lip of the perfectly peeling tube. Fifty yards down the line, he shot out of the barrel, climbed high up the face and leaned back into a radical, long, carving cutback, sending out a wide plume of spray. He brought his board beneath himself again, crouched and leaned forward into another powerful bottom turn, lined up the face, took two steps forward and disappeared inside the hollow vortex not emerging from it until the end of his ride where he executed a powerful, arched-back pullout.
As he paddled the long, five-hundred yards back to the take-off, he admired the golden sunset and the beautiful rainbow of colours it painted across the western sky. He was alone now. He looked around and could not see a soul. He had never experienced this before. He was never the last one in the water. There were other surfers who always surfed into complete darkness and he couldn’t understand why they weren’t doing it today. God knew that the surf was good enough.
He sat out the back waiting for a big set. He knew that the next wave would be his last for that day so he wanted to make it a good one. Eventually, one of the biggest sets of the session came through. He caught the last, largest wave and rode it all the way to the beach some six hundred yards away. He pulled out of the wave just before the deadly shore break and began to paddle back out to sea. In order to come ashore on the tiny beach, half way out along the point, he had to paddle back out almost all the way to the take-off, then turn around and catch a small wave into the beach, proned-out on his board.
By the time he stepped ashore and took a drink of water it was nearly completely dark. He stood there motionless, for a while, admiring the beautiful twilight and reflecting on the many classic waves he enjoyed that afternoon, when something attracted his attention. It was a star, a very bright star, just above the north-eastern horizon. He thought to himself,
‘Boy, that’s a bright star. I don’t remember ever seeing that one before.’
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He took another drink of water and began winding his leg rope around his fins. He had another look around to see if he could see anyone, but there was no one else anywhere. He was alone. Another huge set grabbed his attention. He looked out to sea but instantly lost interest in the waves. He noticed the star again. It seemed brighter and he could have sworn that it had moved sideways. He momentarily forgot everything and fixed all his attention on the star. He muttered to himself,
‘It’s moving, the bloody star is moving … sideways.’
He watched it drifting, first to the left, then to the right, all the time maintaining its very low altitude above the ocean. He mumbled again,
‘It’s getting brighter. Must be a low-flying aircraft with powerful lights … seems to be coming this way … Jees, it’s getting really bright … it’s sure flying close to the water …
Christ, it’s coming this way!’
He remained transfixed on the bright object, which still oscillated from left to right as it kept coming closer, staying just above the surface of the water while becoming brighter and larger.
‘This is no star and it’s looking less and less like a plane all the time … Jesus!’
He felt a shiver of fear run through his body. The thing was big now and seemed no more than a mile out to sea. He stood on the tiny beach, with his water bottle in his hand and his surfboard by his feet, with all his attention frozen on the flying object. As it came nearer it dimmed its light. It slowly glided in over the surf break, softly lighting the tops of the waves. It made absolutely no noise and no wind and appeared to him to be almond shaped.
He could not move now, even if he wanted to. He didn’t not feel in control of his body, but he didn’t feel like he could have moved it if he wanted to, which he wasn’t sure if he did or he didn’t. He felt his fear melt away and a warm calmness take him over. He was also having trouble thinking, although he managed to get one thought out.
‘It looks like some kind of polished, silver metal.’
The silver space ship stopped and levitated about two feet above the water, right in front of him. A small portion of it was over the tiny, secluded beach. It made no sound. It looked like it was about fifty or sixty feet in diameter.
He stood there completely paralysed, but totally calm. Suddenly, a panel opened underneath the ship and a silver ramp, which was covered in some kind of black, grippy rubber, silently extended downward, until it nearly, but not quite, touched the edge of the
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beach no more than ten feet in front of him. He stood there transfixed as he saw a handsome, longhaired, barefoot young man, wearing a pair of faded-blue jeans and a black, Led Zeppelin T-shirt, casually saunter down the ramp and hop onto the sand.
Nothing was said for a moment as the two men looked closely at each other. Then the young space traveller noticed a tear stream from the old surfer’s eye. The grey-haired waterman felt fifteen years of anguish melt away from his heart as he heard the softly-spoken words,
‘Hi, dad.’
He barely composed himself enough to utter the question,
‘Ben, is that you?’
…….
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