The waves crack onto the sand like a bullwhip and echo down the coast.
BOOM!!! BOoom!! Booom! and the ground shakes with their force,
even here, up in the sand dunes where we have the slept the night.
This is the back beach at Portsea, 60 miles South of Melbourne’s
central business district.
Here the waves of the Great Southern Ocean having circled the Globe
unimpeded, merge now with the Pacific, and surf’s up.
We came from Melbourne late yesterday, four boys boring down the
Pacific Highway in Cyril’s red and black Hillman Minx, cheering whenever
a pinging sound announced Cyril had taken the gear change to “valve bounce”.
Cyril isn’t at Art School like us, he has some dead end job, but Cyril has a car.
Initially he was a friend of Eric’s.
Eric is part of the sleepover and is in the same year as me.
He doesn’t take Art School seriously though. Eric is an entrepreneur.
At one time he had hundreds of dollars in cash buried in his back garden
unbeknown to his parents.
It was money he’d won betting on the horses.
Last summer he’d used that cash to rent a hall he turned into a dance club
and it was bringing him in over $2000 every weekend.
At college Eric isn’t doing so well.
His latest project earned him a grade of 1 out of 100.
Dave Delgano, the art teacher, said he didn’t want to give Eric a zero because
that could imply he hadn’t handed anything in.
But Eric doesn’t care.
We will be artists and designers, he will be a millionaire.
Here on this windblown beach though all our pockets are filled with sand.
There is sand in our hair, and damp salt on our skin shining in the sunrise.
In the summer this place will be filled with people, but this is winter and we
are alone.
I don’t know it yet but I will live much of my life on the other side of this Ocean.
For now though I am here, in my youth, in my spirit of place.