On Wednesday, we take a ferry ride across to Gunnamatta Bay intending to walk around the headland to Cronulla Beach. We walk past the sea baths where, as a High School pupil, I trained for the compulsory life-saving certificate, and then we abruptly lose the path.
Assuming that the walk would be familiar to me, I’ve taken little notice of the website instructions – quite honestly I take little notice of any instructions – but, in truth, it’s the beach side of the peninsular that I know best and I’ve never walked this way beyond the baths before.
We spend several boring minutes tramping along dull suburban streets, eyes squinting from street signs to phone, until we pick up the path at Darook Park. In fact, I later discover that there’s no alternative to this route except at low tide when the beach is exposed. As we round the point we look down on the scene we’ve been viewing from across the bay. Surfers taking waves precariously close to the rocky shore and then returning seawards to sit the next ten out. We idly speculate about the criteria they use: what is it that makes this wave better than the last? We look back towards Bundeena and can just make out the verandah of our house high above Jibbon Beach.
It’s a hot afternoon and we’re looking forward to jumping in the sea at South Cronulla beach, but when we arrive, we’re greeted with the news that the beach is closed. Apparently, there’s a dangerous rip and we see that, as a result of storms, the beach has been swept away and the waves are now crashing onto rocks instead of sand. Some way out, sits the dredger that has been ploughing backwards and forwards in Port Hacking Bay ever since our arrival, presumably moving sand from one place to another. Despite the closed beaches, the parks and town are full of people and, all at once, we crave the peace of Bundeena. We check the time, take the next ferry back and plunge gratefully into the sea at our own almost deserted and very intact beach.
The weather heats up and so do our plans. Crunch time is fast approaching and we need to decide when to return to the UK . . . or not. We talk a lot, we run, we swim and then talk some more and gradually ideas take shape. In the evening, we sit in the gloaming listening to the waves on the shore and the occasional squeal of excited children still down on the beach. We look across at the lights of Cronulla, the distant suburbs north of Botany Bay and then, barely discernible through the haze of distance and framed by a gap in the dunes of Kurnell, are the very faint lights of the city of Sydney. The large metropolis, it seems, is just out there at our fingertips, but here it makes no impact. We watch the red and white twinkle of planes flying silently across the sky on their descent to Mascot airport.
