I left home after year 12. I wanted to be near the surf so I took up nursing at Manly Hospital and moved into the nurses home. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Hmmm, now lets see, young girl, loves surfing, suddenly has money, no parental supervision…….shit yeah!
The nurses’ home had a corridor of rooms which looked out over North Head back towards the city, cool, eh? The rooms were tiny boxes, so another nurse and I decided to share the only double. Man, was that a good idea. We had a fire escape outside our window, a rickety, ancient ladder, which snaked down the brick wall.
It was lights out, and lock-up at midnight, but not for Chris and I. Hell no! We’d go dancing down at Benji’s, find a party, hit the Steyne, or go to the Silvescreen and watch Andy Wharhol movies with 3D glasses. What a hoot!
Chris didn’t surf, but she’d be up for adventure. We’d knock off work when we had a couple of days and hit the road. North or South, we’d flip a coin, fuck we got around. In Port Stephens we met some surfers who put us up, no worries, we’ve all stayed friends. Sometimes we camped at Seal Rocks. I had some beautiful waves there, and the nights were amazing, phosphorescence would cover the beach, we swam in the night sea and collected massive shells which the fishermen brought back, it was a beautiful pristine spot back then.
Chris came from Bathurst, so we hitched there once. An old trucky picked us up with a triple deck of sheep on board and a hyper skinny kelpie which jumped all over them. We kept stopping and the trucky would get out and roughly poke skinny sheep legs back in like loose strands of wool trying to dodge the piss. The kelpie would then take off and run around for a few seconds and the trucky would find a hole in the wool and squeeze her back in. I felt sorry for the dog but more so for the sheep. Shit, if we’d gone any slower, we’d have met ourselves coming back!
What did I learn on that trip? There’s no surf in Bathurst.
By Toots
