Private beach
The afternoon was late;
The sun was, regardless, still hot!
It gets too bloody hot up here this time of year.
The aircon too needed a service.
I left my car intent on: getting wet, that’s all. Simple.
The sign said ‘private beach’
I wandered down the narrowly threaded path
Through the bunches of salt bush lashing about me.
Carrying only a towel, no shoes.
The beach was narrow and very dirty.
Seaweed covered the foreshore. Post storm I’d guessed. It would be an uncomfortable, yet still a rewarding, swim.
As I slipped into the rapidly descending sand under my feet
The seaweed lashed about my legs
The water was warm yet still refreshing after such a long sweaty drive.
But the swim would be brief, it was somewhat unwelcoming amongst the mangled churn and then I began to feel the recognisable tug of a rip beneath me.
Knowing better than to resist, I let myself go with the current, until finally clamouring free onto a distinct sandbar, a stubborn few minutes or so later, just beyond. Instinct rarely deserts you at such times; having grown up in the coastal waters back in NSW. It was second nature.
As I withdrew from the ocean
I found I had been moved up about a 100 meters on...
from where my towel was left ...back up the beach.
Walking that way along the sullied narrow beach skirting,
I stumbled on a noticeable line in the sand. One which could only be created by one thing it alarmingly occurred to me - a big crocodile.
Gazing some 30 meters up to the line of saltbush, I zoomed in on a large saltwater 'croc' sunning itself amongst the seaweed, sand, driftwood, grasses, ...and embedded too almost up into the scraggy bushes.
Panic set in...
I looked toward my towel only 30 meters in front of me and decided instead to cut straight toward the car - walking slowly at first although my mind was full-on racing.
Struggling for composure, I had barely made progress up the contours of rolling sand when I heard the movement I had dreaded (from now what was straight behind me) and ...coming straight at me!
Without any further thought I was now running aligned to where I figured the car might be; disoriented as I was and still hundreds of meters away; with now no clear unbroken path toward it at all.
A flash of options were shuttering, in and out, and all through my mind... but in truth it was all reaction ...pure fear, like I‘ve have never felt before. It was: Survival, in a word.
Despite charging shoeless through the undergrowth of bracken, stones and nettle, I was veritably flying over it, or so it seemed, I felt no pain. The adrenalin took care of that...
Until such time as my left leg buckled badly and there was no time to assess, just reaction, lost in the moment. Only my target mattered. I fell face first in the bracken but then again, I was indeed up again and gone, barrelling once more toward my blind target. But where? Where?
I recklessly crashed through another stand of branches now with no measure of thought whatsoever... not to look back... only forward until
I saw it...
The car, finally visible, just beyond a last patch of mulga,
Then it hit me... oh, did it hit me...
Where are the car keys?
A lot is said of ‘the path not taken’...
But sometimes we are just better not knowing... suffice to say, the sign said ‘private beach’...
For once in my life, I could’ve just done what I was told.
Could’ve.
Five hundred metres on, I drove over a wooden bridge that straddled a stream running down into the ocean. To the side of the crossing was a faded but very informative sign - ‘crocodiles - do not swim’.
Grahame J Flynn Views in Verse
