Swell Science

Flat Rock Beach, NSW – 21 November 2022, 5:37 pm

Surf: 5-6ft

Swell: 8.9ft, 11s

Wind: 23kts N (offshore)

Strong currents and large waves may impact surfer safety—always monitor conditions while in the water.

The sandpaper wind swarms fast down the empty shore, and I wish it would just consume this board, so I never have to see it again. I grab at the water with all my 15-year-old-girl strength, but the heavy gales reverse my progress, and I drift toward the shallows. Usually, I love the beach. Back home in Victoria, Dad and I would travel hours for a good back beach to bodysurf in. We’d practically become locals at Portsea. Torquay saw a lot of us, too. But here, none of it seems to translate. Bodysurfing is absolutely nothing like real surfing, even when you’re just catching whitewash.

‘Just try three more waves and then we can go,’ Dad says, his legs dangling off the sides of his orange striped board. I don’t know why he measures things like that. Four more songs ‘till we’re home! One more drive until we wash the car! When I was a kid, he’d measure my bedtime by what show came on. I came to hate the blue dude from In the Night Garden and his stupid sailboat bed.

Dad calls out a warning, but it’s too late. The saltwater burns my nostrils as I breathe it in, my body weighed down by the volume of water above. When I break through the surface, Dad’s bobbing over to me, dragging his board behind him.

‘Alright, come on. That’s enough for today.’ I wish he could measure the ocean’s moods. Maybe he could if he spent enough time here, studying the waves. Maybe there’s a formula, a sort of swell science.

I stand up and saltwater drips down from my nose, like the tears that swelled in my childhood self’s eyes as I watched that blue character fade further into the waves, the little light on his mast becoming one with the stars. Maybe I just hated saying goodbye.

Flat Rock Beach, NSW – 3 March 2023, 9:26am

Surf: 3-4ft

Swell: 5ft, 11s

Wind: 3kts NE (offshore)

High tides and favourable winds in the morning will produce clean, gentle waves.

I take in the serenity, happy to be walking down the sandy trail with a schoolbag tucked under my arm instead of a surfboard. The school colours are too similar to my old ones, so I try to focus on something else. The sun shines through the trees, illuminating wooden plaques plastered with faded letters that spell out swim between the flags. The birds sing a song that I remember from the suburbs, something shrill but soft, and I follow the footprints leading forward in the sand. The trail is a mosaic of everything that’s come before.

‘Ya know, Hemsworth surfs pretty often ‘round the headland. Maybe you’ll run into him sometime,’ Mr Spicoli says to me, and everyone laughs. The tide is high, pushing gentle whitewater far up shore, and I know that Dad will see the conditions from the headland on his drive to work.

My research partner for the biology excursion, Ella, beckons me over with her hands full of beakers and salinity testers. Everyone here has been nice, the kids travelling in small crowds around me to find out all about the glamorous city life. It’s a small school, only 19 in my class, so there’s only so much gossip to go around. In exchange for exaggerated stories about wild sports fans and parties, they tell me all the secret spots in town to get cheap seafood. The thought of prawns and mud crabs makes me feel nauseous, and I remember the meaty aroma inside the redbrick tuck shop on the corner near my old school. Man, what I’d give for a kebab.

I take a beaker from Ella, and we get to work. A little boy on a boogie board howls with laughter as he washes up at our feet.

Spooky Beach, NSW – 12 May 2023, 11:42am

Surf: 3-4ft

Swell: 12.4ft, 12s

Wind: 6kts NW (offshore)

Clean waves across the coastline with light showers and winds picking up in the late morning.

The blonde girl glides across the wave, a glinting, pearly silhouette against the powdered sky. She paddles past with a man, the pair of them looking totally and completely invigorated by the ocean, and I feel a pang inside my chest. She looks like someone I used to laugh with at the back of a gloomy Monday science class in Melbourne. We’d draw caricatures in the pages of our book and debrief our weekend endeavours until the teacher’s veins were practically popping out of her neck. She’d usually yell something like:

‘You two, shut up!’, or ‘Please, for goodness’ sake, stop talking.’

‘Oh, sorry miss.’ We’d say.

It’s been a while since I called now, but I know she won’t pick up.

I shift my position to face the shoreline, feeling my board rise four feet higher beneath my chest with the next wave. I catch another glimpse of the girl with the familiar face, and she’s watching me, propped up on her pretty pink hibiscus-patterned surfboard. A wave of arrogance strikes me like a bullet, and I mistake it for confidence. I start to paddle. Opalescent raindrops fall around me like tears, and I feel the board latch onto the wave beneath my feet. Okay, I think, okay. This is something. I take a breath and begin to shift my weight. But as soon as I plant my palms to stand, the wind yanks me sideways as the mound of water envelops my body, and then my surfboard.

The heat in my chest rises to my face and I swim up for air. I can hear the girl’s laughter behind me, and I miss her.

Flat Rock Beach, NSW – 6 June 2023, 3:38pm

Surf: 5-6ft

Swell: 11.6ft, 11s

Wind: 13kts SE (offshore)

Storm conditions originating from the East may cause strong currents and unusually large swells from the early morning. Stay alert for changing conditions in the water.

Ella’s invited me to meet her at Flat Rock after school, for a chat and a swim. It feels good to be someone’s friend again.

I’m paddling to keep my head afloat. The ebb and flow of the undercurrent and the rocks beneath my feet grounds me from the wind above the surface. This is the ocean I remember. The same big blue sheet that stretches all the way around the country, all the way back home. My body has danced through this water before, only a little further down shore, and it feels familiar to use my body as a board.

Ella catches a good one, and I watch her disappear as the wave charges past, her hoots muffled by the wall of water. Grinning, I get the next one, stretching my arms straight in front of my ears torpedo-style. Ella taught me this technique. She says it helps you go further and faster in the already-huge waves, so of course I use it—I’m always careful not to give anyone a reason to stereotype me as a too-posh city girl. I tuck myself into the pocket of the wave, and it snatches me up.

I’m going fast, yes, but something isn’t right. The water lifts me higher and higher up the face of the mountain of water, and I flap my arms desperately, trying to pull out of the danger. But the current cannot be persuaded. The tide suddenly sucks out, and I crash into the sand with the force of a tsunami. First, it’s my wrist, bending and croaking as it contorts against the ocean floor. My head is quick to follow, smashing into the sand. I hear Ella scream. Then comes the water, heavy and unforgiving, and little black specks like grains of sand cloud my vision.

Spooky Beach, NSW – 1 August 2023, 7:10am

Surf: 3-4ft

Swell: 8.4ft, 11s

Wind: 5kts NE (offshore)

Large swells behind the headland will shape clean, long waves peeling off from the north-east.

On the way to school, I usually sit on the left side of the bus, three seats from the back. When the road peaks on the headland, I get a perfect view of the gold-tinted waves crashing against the base of the cliff. Further out on the rocks, the yellow-haired surfers plop into the water like seals, and I like to imagine that somewhere among them is Mr Spicoli. He always comes to school with his hair soaking wet, and a wetsuit flung over the side mirror of his van to dry. Perhaps Chris Hemsworth’s down there too sometimes, ripping waves on his $4 million surfboard. I wonder if Thor is bothered by the wind.

It’s been a few months since the accident. I didn’t even notice the ache in my head until the day after, when I looked at my biology textbook and could barely make out a single sentence.

Chatper hrTee:

Adatpatoins to Sanline Warter

It scared me into an ER trip, where I was diagnosed with a Grade 2 concussion and a nasty muscle tear along my forearm.

‘I’m not making it up,’ I’d said to Mr Spicoli, ‘I actually cannot read.’ I was holding out the note that the hospital gave me to get extensions on my assignments. He was laughing.

‘What, you don’t believe me?’ I said.

‘No, no, I’m proud of ya! This is what life’s about. Ya livin’!’

I’d walked back to my seat feeling like the protagonist of some Dead Poets Society rip-off. Ella cringed at me from across the table.

But as I watch Dad paddle past, the soft wind carrying his laughter down the face of the wave, I recognise what Mr Spicoli meant. It’d never felt like living before. Surfing, I mean. Living wasn’t about making the right impression or wishing I was good just for the sake of being good.

I turn my board for the next wave, sinking my arms deep into the water and cupping my hands like shovels, scooping backward with all my strength. The mound of water reaches my board and boosts me forward, but my arms stay in the water for a few more strokes.

Dad calls out but they’re not instructions this time. I pop up on my board, finding my centre of gravity. My vision is pearly flecks of sea spray, and I glide. The afternoon is warm and the little camp of towels on the sand speckle the shoreline in colour. I look back at Dad, and he’s smiling. The grin sticks to my face as I dive back into the water.

Flat Rock Beach, NSW – 13 November 2023, 7:10 am

Surf: 4-5ft

Swell: 9.4ft, 11s

Wind: 8kts NE (offshore)

Large swells and above-average winds will create strong, clean waves until storms pick up in the later morning.

I measure my old Melbourne friends by how long ago I spoke to them. Three weeks, nine months, one year. I seem to hold them at a distance now, like the sinking pearl on the horizon. Maybe that’s what the wind’s chasing after. But the sun can’t be touched from way down here. It’s like time, always reaching, always falling faster and faster toward that spot in the distance that we call the future, with hopeful timbre.

I feel the grits of sand stuck in my molars as I tread water, one hand holding my board. I still can’t paddle past the green waves, but I heard somewhere that it takes 600 hours to get good at surfing. I figure it’ll come in time.

The incoming water bites my skin, and I hold myself under the surface for a little bit longer. The undercurrent at Flat Rock feels familiar now. I can map out the rocks on the ocean floor, and I’ve memorised the time between swells, eleven seconds. And while the wind above the water’s surface whistles toward something on the horizon, the ocean seems to pave a way back to what is now, to what is tactile and fresh and supple around my body.

The faraway thunder rolls in slow movements, and I start to feel a soft, almost undetectable emotion—what is it? The lull of my heartbeat synchronised with the waves and the rumbling sky.

Contentment.

I can hear Dad’s voice in my head: only 500 more hours until you’re a pro!