Life
begins at 40!
Well
actually, a bit earlier than that...
On
the day I turned 40,
I spent the day on Paradise Beach.
This
is me on the day.
I
spent most of the supremely happy moments of my childhood
there,
my dad and I would go fishing, every couple of weeks in
Summer.
I'd make some sandwiches for dad and my brother and I,
fill
up the big orange thermos and get tea, sugar and milk in little
jars
and pack the lot into a big cardboard box.
We'd
get in the new 1969 Valiant
(it's
name was Beastie)
and head
off
for the beach. We had to go through Morwell, Traralgon,
Rosedale,
Sale (where
we always stopped to buy whitebait and
bluebait
at the service station, then up the road to the milkbar for a
milkshake
and a packet of Cheezels for me, I don't know what
everyone
else had, but I'd always put the cheezels on my fingers
and
eat them off one by one.)
Then
we went through Longford, past the oil refinery with the
flames
coming out of the big chimney and oh yuuk...Dutson
Downs....
the major sewerage works for the entire region,
pheeuw!
I used to take perfumed tissues with me so I could hold
them
up to my nose as we went by, and dad would tell me when
it
was safe to breathe again. Down over the causeway over
the
lake and we were almost there.Then dad would say "Aahh...
just
smell that ozone!" every time we got near the coast.
Then....aaaaghhhhhmmmm....we
were there at Paradise Beach.
I
was really good at fishing, I used to whirl the big 18
foot surf rod
around
above my head... and fling the baited hook out over the
breakers
to where the fish were, out near the sandbar. I'd
catch
flathead mostly, and gummy shark and big crabs (though
they
were a pain, they'd tangle your line and walk off with it, and
snap
the line sometimes.)
There used to be men down there
sometimes
that went in fishing competitions all the time, they
used
to stand back and watch me haul in a big fish and say
how
well I did it, was I proud!
The
days were always hot at Paradise Beach, dad said there
must
be something about the weather there. He bought a block of
land
, said it'd be a good investment. There was the beach, then
a
strip of land, then lakes on the other side of the land where there
were
heaps of waterbirds.We never really went over there, we were
too
busy fishing.
The
days were sundrenched. I'd sit on the dunes and watch sharks
go
by, we didn't go in the water much! Sometimes in summer the
shark
spotter plane would fly up the beach, and we'd all wave
like
mad. Uncle Neil from Sale was in the plane sometimes, and
he'd
tell us later that he'd seen us. I used to get a stick and run
it
through the sand, and find pippies. Dad'd light a fire and I'd put
the
pippies in the old pot with sea water and cook them for a
couple
of minutes, they tasted great! There were millions of tiny
shells
on the beach, there'd be big areas where you could hardly
see
the sand for them, I used to love them.
We'd
usually stay there until just before dark, the sun would set
behind
us and the water would look like mother-of-pearl, dusk
would
set in. I'd be able to see the lights of the oil rigs way
out
to sea. We knew then we were in for trouble with the mosquitoes,
so
we'd dig up the fish we'd caught out of the damp sand where
we'd
kept them safely buried for the day and take off really fast
through
the sand dunes and the tea tree scrub for the safety of
Beastie
the car. They were the biggest mozzies I've ever seen!
Then
came the trip home. It got dark pretty soon after we
left,
it gets dark in about 20 minutes
in Australia, so we'd be
driving
home through the lights of the towns and I'd be sunburned
and
happy. Sometimes I'd snooze off in the car until we got home.
Sometimes
we'd get Kentucky Fried on the way, sometimes I'd have
to
cook when we got home. (I
was head cook and bottlewasher, as
dad
used to say, because I was the only girl.)
If
you want to go to my Recovery Page and read my story, you
can
find out what happened after that, these were the days just
after
Freda left, where my brother was still my best friend.
I
came back to Paradise Beach not long after dad died,it was the
first
time I can remember being there that it was cold. That must
mean
something mustn't it? (maybe
just that dad didn't take me
there
when the weather wasn't nice!) I
was 39 years old, I'd been
to
heaven and hell and back again, around Australia and up and
down
and across, everywhere except back to Paradise Beach.
How
I'd missed it.
On
my 40th
birthday, I took the happy child that had romped
and
played and rolled down those sand dunes and built castles
in
the sand and collected the tiny shells and pippies and been
happy
joyous and free there..... back to play in Paradise.
I
could not think of a happier, more peaceful, beautiful way to
spend
a day that I couldn't be bothered commiserating about
getting
old on.
My
child inside is usually 4... she's
7
sometimes, then she'll be
11
or 13 (like
when she was at the beach).She
had big
problems
remembering the happy days for a long time,
then
she remembered that there had to be Christmases, there
had
to be birthdays....surely there were good times then?
Then
she remembered ALL the days on Paradise Beach.
That
happy child is my present and my future.
I
can play now.
Like
to go back?
