For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a surfer girl.
On my 13th birthday, I received a purple Billabong T-shirt with an 80s paisley yin-yang. While I loved it, I felt like an imposter. I didn’t surf. I didn’t even have a boyfriend who surfed.
So, I did what any fashion enthusiast would do: I took up surfing. I bought a bright red board slightly smaller than the Titanic, had a couple of lessons and, if you count riding the white wash as surfing, got quite good. Through my teenage years, I took a sporadic break from a rigorous sunbathing schedule to surf and made steady progress. I became an expert at sitting on my board—which I affectionately named Big Red—and even succeeded in duck diving with the monster. I learnt the lingo, knew if the wind was offshore and could tell that a “set” was approaching “out the back.” I couldn’t actually catch a wave but my knowledge of surfing grew, and with it, legitimacy to expand my surf wardrobe.
In my early 20s, I moved to a sleepy surf town and started dating a boy who surfed. Big Red and I regularly popped down to the beach for a paddle but even under the tutelage of my boyfriend, I failed to catch anything bigger than a ripple. He took me to his home break of Tyagarah near Byron Bay, and it was here I lost my surf rage virginity.
While he effortlessly paddled out and was happily catching waves, I couldn’t even get out past the break. Wave after enormous wave crashed over my head, scooping me up and sending me into a series of spin cycles. When finally there was a break between sets, I clambered onto my board, expelled a milk carton full of salt water from my nose and actually managed to paddle for a wave. I quickly gained momentum and height but when suddenly I was staring down a 10-storey drop, it became apparent I was not going to catch this wave but be hammered by it, again. In an attempt to minimise the imminent beating, I dove under the wave as Big Red was sucked up into it. The tension on my leg rope slackened and for just a moment, the seaweed stuck down my throat tasted of sweet victory. I had finally defeated my ruthless tormenter. My triumph was short lived when out of nowhere, Big Red came crashing into me with herculean force: one of the fins piecing my wetsuit pants and slicing straight into my flesh.
When as newlyweds, my husband and I decided to live and work in London, it wasn’t a hard decision to leave Big Red in the shed.
Like many antipodeans, we found a house close to the tube station in Willesden Green and crammed it full of Aussies. While there was a line for the shower every morning, a sink full of unwashed dishes every evening and an endless stream of dossers living in our lounge room, they were good times. We played soccer in the backyard, had barbecues whenever the sun shone and joined fellow countrymen in the local touch football competition. We discovered great Indian restaurants, fell in love with the shopping on Oxford Street, enjoyed the West End and explored the English countryside on weekends. It was on one of these mini breaks that my husband and I fell in love with a little coastal town that was to become our favourite destination in Europe.
We had recently gone shopping for a Volkswagen campervan and as the cool surfy-looking one we wanted was full of rust, we settled on its fixed high-top ugly sister. So, with the disappointing absence of surfboards on the roof, we packed our wetsuits and headed for the waves.
The English love their motorway rest stops, so every 50 kilometres or so, another “Services” sign would appear. These mini towns come complete with a selection of restaurants and fast-food chains, grocery stores, gift shops and bathrooms big enough to service the entire English army—with long rows of immaculately cleaned toilet cubicles. It wasn’t a short trip from London so three service stops, four wrong turns and five hours later, we arrived in Croyde, North Devon.
The beginning of our love affair started at the end of a narrow and windy road. Perched on the side of a rocky hill overlooking the ocean was a charming two-storey bed and breakfast serving Devonshire cream tea. The warmth of the open fire greeted us and we placed our order with the friendly owner. The spectacular view soon drew us back into the cold air and we huddled together watching the waves roll over the rocks below. It wasn’t long before a pot of freshly brewed coffee and a steaming mug of rich hot chocolate arrived. Coupled with two oversized scones and jars of homemade jam and butter thick cream, it was pure, sinful heaven. So exquisite was it, that instead of using the tickets we purchased to fly to Oslo the following weekend, we opted to return to Croyde and the cream tea.
With the jam and cream jars looking cleaner than if they had come straight out of the dishwasher, it was time to hit the surf. We donned our recently purchased steamer wetsuits guaranteed by the pimply-faced sales boy to keep us “warm for hours,” hired some boards from the seaside shop and, like all good surfers, ran towards the waves. We made it about a hundred metres before we realised this was not your average short trot down to the water. The beach stretched for miles and was a minefield of hollows and holes, rocky outcrops and clumps of seaweed. Like many English beaches we were to discover, running the marathon distance from the sand dunes to the surf with a cumbrous board under one arm was not only challenging but misguided.
We eventually made it to the water and in a futile attempt to conceal our tourist status, waded straight in. It may have been the strangled gasp that involuntarily escaped my lips or perhaps it was the shade of purple we turned that gave us away, but it became very clear to the locals that we hailed from warmer waters. With every faith in my new steamer, I boldly lay down onto my board but as the water started to slowly seep in around my neck, that faith waivered. I continued paddling until a bigger wave approached and I was forced to duck dive straight into the icy water.
I had never experienced an ice cream headache and believed that to associate the unadulterated pleasure of consuming ice cream with pain and discomfort was ill conceived. However, the instant my head went under the water, I wondered if a swordfish had driven its razor-sharp nose straight through my skull. I was forced to reassess my position on cold-induced head trauma. Semi-recovered and with only one more attack from the insidious fish, I made it out past the break and was rewarded with the perfect wave.
Fairly ironic that a girl who had taken up surfing as a teenager, lived in a surf town, married a surfer and had been attempting to surf in the warm waters of Australia half her life should catch her first unbroken wave in the artic temperatures of Croyde, England. I did feel a little adulterous cheating on my faithful Big Red, but at that moment, the emotional and physical scares, the frustration and failure faded along with the feeling in my toes. Perhaps the sales boy was right about my wetsuit after all because as I stood up and felt the power of the ocean surge under me, the cold melted away and for three exhilarating seconds, my heart was warm.
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