White Out

This is the beach at Scealey Bay. From our verandah the beach circled in a white arc in front of us, and there was no sign of any entrance into the bay. I never reached the end of the beach, although I would determinedly try to walk a little bit further each day. Little waders, that spend about four months here before heading off back to Siberia. As you walk along the beach they scatter before you. I thought they would be picking the sand dry, but certain parts of the beach, if you dig up the sand, it is just cram packed with shells. There's no shortage of food for the waders, who lay their eggs in the shallows in the sand and are a miracle of survival. There wasn't much to celebrate difference, to ever be accepted. A flag flew from one of the houses at the back, though everyone pretended not to know what the flag meant. It meant, I guess, that this was the hippy, or alternative element, here in the middle of nowhere.

The long white beach still had whole sea shells on it, something you never see on Sydney's beaches. The Christmas he somehow longed for was away in impulses he could never have imagined. We watched, we waited, we tried. The heat gusted across the verandah. A car crawled by. We remembered people we hadn't thought about in years, or was it decades. Or with whom we had no one to compare notes. Lyn was a character, we said, and laughed, that she was. But she had overdosed pregnant and left a son we had all adopted in our own way; who then went back to his father. There weren't any happy endings, none.

Have you really been to Cambodia, I asked one blonde haired bearded bloke wearing a t-shirt from Asia. Yes, he replied, and proceeded to regale us with tales of girls on each arm and wild wild times. You number one, you velly handsome man, I said, and we all laughed. You've been there! he said. Yes, I said, and remembered when all these things seemed like a miracle of exploration; not, as now, memories to be flicked through in the heat. The sky merged with the sea and there was no nicer place to be. Dread the day to leave. Dread the day to return to normal life. White Out. White Widow White Out. Indecipherable codes came down the years, and we longed for our own sea change, our place on the coast, our own comfortable retirement. Blasted. Plastered. Our hopes of a comfortable tomorrow washed away in the heat. Col rolled another cigarette on the verandah and I asked if he was ever going to give up smoking. He looked at me as if I was mad; or as if for him it was simply too late and I should understand that. The beach stretched forever and all we knew was that we were comfortable here, we wanted to come back, the sky, the salt, the sea, wasn't there a way to make it ours, to make it last for ever?