A Wave of Change had Me all at Sea
In 1965 I am pre-pubescent, awkward in my skin and with as yet no role in the outside world. But to me it is a floodlit year, suspended between innocence and change.
On Boxing Day we set off for our six-week long annual summer holidays on the Ocean Grove foreshore, knowing that seven days before Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker had escaped from Pentridge Prison. My parents appear curiously unperturbed, despite the possibility that these men have murdered. But I remember that first taste of fear, like salt on my tongue.
'Just keep a watch out,' says Mum. 'When you go exploring, stay on the main tracks.' I wait for more explanation but instead she fusses over the flounces on my skirt, and the escapees are reduced to an addendum.
I nestle into the back seat of the old Dodge surrounded by my Christmas booty. My companion is an enormous ham snug in multiple pillowslips. There must be nothing to worry about because at church yesterday morning the rosy baby was again lying in his manger. Each year he emerges from the vestry cupboard with more chips on his plaster torso, but his fingers are intact and curl inwards. As we children hover around the rickety stable, our mothers chat about the cooking times for chicken and plum pudding and drifts of incense sweeten the air. Our lives revolve around rituals that allow no place for fear. It is a safe world and will go on like this forever.
It is only a two-hour drive from our house to the campsite but I am young and need to measure it in bursts. From our suburb to the city I count the traffic lights gained and lost. As Melbourne fades I drool at the thought of fish and chips at Werribee. As we purr along Geelong Road, Mum tears the white wrapping paper into squares and shares out portions of hot chips. We divide one piece of fish between us. I nibble and grease seeps through the paper and onto my knees. When we glimpse the sea at Geelong Dad stops the car and gets out. He beats his chest and takes exaggerated gulps of air. Mum puts down her knitting and sits with her hands in her lap.
We draw lots to see if we will travel via Barwon Heads or Ocean Grove. Ocean Grove wins but to me the road that stretches along the foreshore between the two towns where we will set up camp is as long as the Nullarbour Plain. Halfway along we turn off and weave through the foreshore tracks, searching for our campsite. Early each year we apply for a site, a ballot ensues in some far-off office and the lucky win a flat, sandy patch framed by tea tree.
For weeks prior to Christmas, Dad packs the trailer and when we leave it is bulbous and bound by ropes. The camping gear is added to each year and resembles a set from Lawrence of Arabia, complete with carpets. Mum paces the length of our site, heel to toe and counting. The carpet will fit and so will the chunky wooden bedside cupboards - sourced from a second-hand shop and stowed in the shed with anticipatory glee.
We greet our neighbours and eye their new gear with alternate envy and complacency. Innovation is prized as camping shops replete with gadgetry are yet to appear, and advertising still knows its place. In our patch of foreshore caravans are few. They belong to the wealthy and line the tracks of what we call the foreshore inner suburbs. We don't envy their status, only the shelter they provide from rain and storms. We are proud of our tents; tents with baby picket fences and garden gnomes, tents with checked curtains, tents with ice chests refilled each morning by the ice-man who chips at the blocks with a dagger-like blade.
When the last tent peg has been hammered into the sand our holiday begins and I lose track of time. During my early forays I watch out as I've been told but when no shadow darkens my path I grow impatient and scoot along the dune tracks, ducking under the low tea tree. Both air and sand are hot and in the dips I burrow until the space is cool and deep enough to hold my body. When I return, nobody asks where I've been. Mum is busy with the enormous ham she has pulled from its cloth wrapping. Ham sandwiches with homemade pickle, ham salad, and just enough ham to see us through to next week.
'It takes an hour for your lunch to settle before you can swim,' says Mum. 'You don't want to drown do you?'
So I lie on the warm camp bed and ponder the relationship between ham and drowning while I read the Women's Weekly from cover to cover and Mum and Dad sleep off lunch at the far end of the tent. When I hear them stir I scramble into my bathers. We walk to the beach where wet and shivering after a long swim I watch horrified as Dad rolls in the sand until his limbs resemble crumbed lamb chops.
Mum takes long walks along the beach. She takes off her sandals and sets off with her face to the sea. Egotist that I am, I cannot help but notice her contentment, the tilt of her head in the summer sun, her smile as she returns an hour later with fresh cream buns from the store. By this time red patches glow on my pale skin and for the next few days I visit the sea only after the sun begins to sink. Transparent ribbons peel off my back and shoulders.
It is the length of two streets to the long queue in a primitive shower block where we put sixpence in the slot for hot water. Mum makes me wear Dad's thongs for the floor is muddied with sand and squelches between unwary toes. As I wait my turn I watch women heave breasts from tight swimsuits and finger my own pink nipples, wondering at just such an explosion. I notice that the children I waited a year to play with have separated into girls and young women. We are no longer all scrawny and sunburnt, plucking at the sagging seats and drooping necklines of our Christmas present bathers. In the same way babies hide behind their hands and believe you can't see them, I wrap myself in an oversize beach towel and hope to disappear.
The previous year our neighbour rigged a shower from hessian wrapped around four posts, a shower rose and a bucket of water. We shrieked and hugged ourselves as the lukewarm water chilled our sunburnt bodies, and goose bumps spread like a rash, but were always drawn back to the companionable queues of the block.
In the evenings we gather in each other's camps and play card games with periwinkles for counters. I listen to the slap of cards against the flimsy table piled in the centre with homemade shortbread and fruitcake. Late at night we straggle home to bed. We watch Dad turn down the gas lamp and hear the hiss as the flame is extinguished and there is nothing but dark and the far off crash of waves.
Some nights we have a bonfire on the beach where we cook whatever fish Dad has caught that day and shiver with sunburn. Our neighbours join us and I watch the teenagers in pedal pushers and tight tops strum guitars. Most of the girls have spent the afternoon hidden away in hair rollers, applying nail polish and make-up. I am wide-eyed as they are what I hope to become.
Midway through January Ryan and Walker are recaptured. Dad can now safely return to work and drive back on the weekends. His parting severs our link to the outside world and Mum and I are alone. We rise when the sun heats the inside of the tent and for a change from the beach we swim in the Barwon River, heart in mouth at the sudden dip into the channel that sends us hurtling back to the edge.
"Watch out for the rip,' says Mum. I stare at the river and wonder at the current coursing through it like an underwater spectre.
Mum keeps close watch on the weather. At the first sign of wind she stacks boxes in the centre of the tent, climbs up and frees the central metal-spiked pole from its mooring. More than once over the years an unexpected gust has lifted the pole to rip cleanly through the canvas roof of the tent.
I'm not sure who lost innocence in that year of 1965; the world or me. They say that such spotlit times in our lives mark personal changes. Perhaps this is all it was; a young girl aware of a budding body and the world into which it would emerge. Or maybe it was the drama unfolding on the eve of our departure for camp when Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker escaped from their prison.
The next year the Beaumont children disappeared from their lives without a trace and we saw ourselves in their pictures. Not long after that we stopped going for long holidays. Maybe it was simply time to move on. But those final holidays are luminous with a longing for something I cannot name, and they are framed by these larger tragedies.
And on warm days when I step outside and the heat enfolds like honey, I am transported back to that floodlit year of 1965, and to all the years before it, where there are ham sandwiches and days without boundaries.