Surfari Highway - episode seventeen
- Distance travelled:
- 12,318 KM
- Location:
- Albany, Far South Coast, WA
- Travel dates:
- June 5, 2011
- Status:
- Second stop of our WA leg
- Surf:
- Three to five foot beachbreaks
- Swell direction:
- South-west
- Wind:
- Light north-westerly.
- Weather:
- Fine, sunny.
- Tides:
- High tide 10.55 am, low tide 8.50 pm.
Having just descended approximately 500 weathered wooden steps down a steep coastal hilltop to surf an empty strip of beachbreaks on WA's far south coast, the sight of three large, severed salmon heads is not the most cheery start to my surf session.
I regard the heads curiously as they stare up dumbly from the sand with slightly startled expressions, as if they still haven't quite worked out what happened to their bodies. A large, corpulent, old fisherman of some sort of European extraction is heaving an enormous sack of what is presumably the salmons' missing torsos over his shoulder with loud groans of exertion. He grips his rod and tackle box with his other hand, as he turns his determined gaze to the 500 steps awaiting him.
"That's quite a climb," I comment.
"I only have one lung," he tells me, as if I might be able to offer some remedy to this sorry circumstance, or perhaps that this missing organ makes what's happened to the decapitated salmon a fair deal.
I had perhaps not fully considered the reality of paddling out into this bit of lonely ocean where large salmon appear to be in abundance. As I regard the thumping beachbreaks from sea level, they appear rather more intimidating and less orderly than they did from the elevated lookout of the hilltop.
From up there, I appeared to have my pick of half a dozen inviting peaks, peeling left and right and stretching off in both directions. From down here, it is an unruly moshpit of exploding whitewater and dredging sandbanks and surging currents. There are at least several other surfers spread out along the various peaks and I instinctively gravitate towards a group of three of them for security. But the inviting rights I'd seen from the top are harder to find out in the water, and I scratch about anxiously unable to find the lineup. I venture over to an adjacent left and have a little more luck, but I am on my own here.
Sitting out the back, I regard a large grey, vaguely round shape underwater beyond the lineup and assume it is a large rock or patch of exposed reef. When it begins moving towards me I am not so sure. Eventually, I figure out it is a large manta ray and beat a hasty retreat.
Back on the beach, it is my turn to regard those 500 wooden steps with dread. I pause every 40 or 50 steps to draw breath and admire the view below, and the higher I get the better the waves appear. It's hard to fathom these orderly peaks are the same maddening seas I've recently been outwitted by. When I get to the top, a woman with a couple of young kids informs me they've just been watching a large shark cruise up and down the beach. "They're there all the time," the woman's husband tells me, casually.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I crossed the SA border into WA but I'm starting to understand, this largely unspoken hazard is the ever-present undercurrent of surfing remote coastlines. I heard a story of a guy from Streaky Bay who'd surfed those sharky waters his whole life without a problem, then went to Byron Bay for a holiday and got his leg half bitten off.
This southern coastline has been good to me, delivering a stunning run of waves across three states and no close encounters with vicious predators on land or water. But it is getting cold, this coast is getting lonelier and more foreboding as the mercury drops. It's time to heard north to warmer climes. The RAV is fuelled up and performing beautifully, even as we load her up with jerry cans of fuel and water for the vast distances ahead. The north-west and those winter Indian Ocean swells are calling.
Culinary highlight: Nearby Denmark's award winning bakery offers customers its sumptuous "Vinda-roo Pie," curried kangaroo in a light flaky pastry. Perfect after a cold water session.
Local tip: Surfing alone is not recommended around these parts, though sometimes you'll have to search to find company in the surf.