Western Australia is a less-visited region of Australia, and I have always liked it for that reason. Perth, the largest city, is frequented by hoards of Singaporean and Taiwanese tourists every year, but they seldom leave city limits. The rest of the area is Australia sans tourist-oriented gimmicks. Most visitors here are what are called the Grey Nomads, mobile home toting retirees who sweep through towns like locusts and don't contribute to the communities they frequent, so tourism isn't terribly high on rural WA's agenda.
Those efforts which are made, like the comical Golden Pipeline Heritage Trail are half hearted at best. The 'trail' is a footpath running next to a concrete pipe that transports water from the coastal areas to the mining regions in the middle of the desert. As part of the effort to make it a tourist attraction, a section of it was painted gold. Surprisingly, after a while they painted it grey again.
Though it was early January in Australia, it was summer in the southern hemisphere. With temperatures soaring to record highs in Sydney and Melbourne, the south coast town of Albany was blessedly cool, no higher than twenty most days even with the sun out. We had travelled down to the town from the city to experience the beaches and visit my cousin's mother in law, who was renting a house there.
Albany is a retirement town, full of interesting little shops and art galleries and home to large numbers of wealthy retired farmers. Its white-sand beaches are numerous, and those closest to town are lined with small restaurants selling fresh seafood. The town itself is built up the sides of a valley overlooking the ocean, a mix of idyllic old wooden houses and concrete and stone modern constructions. Our host's home was a little two bed bungalow, with a deck easily the size of the rest of the house looking out over the valley and down to the sea.
After some recoup time (it's almost a full day's drive from Perth to Albany), we travelled to a more remote beach, which we were told would be quiet and sheltered. The wind was up, and the temperature had dropped to about fifteen degrees. We drove through beautiful countryside, and then swept onto an anonymous dirt side road that then snaked down the steep sides of a cliff lined cove. At the bottom, things were a little more busy than we had been led to believe. A small colony of hang-gliders had camped at the top of the cove, and they circled above us like curious vultures, riding the updraughts on wings of red and green.
We parked up, and walked down to the beach with towels wrapped around us to keep the wind off. Against the vivid green of the cliff side vegetation, the beach was like powdered bone, and it squeaked as it compressed underfoot.
The sun had begun to sink below the cliff-line, and the shadow cast by it now covered much of the beach, leaving a sliver of shining sand against the crashing surf. It looked calm enough from the land but as we grew closer it became clear that the waves were a mixture of small harmless waves and occasional monsters which crashed far further up the beach than we expected. My girlfriend's long skirt was caught by one of these, soaking her from the waist down while she was paddling in the shallows. She waded back to shore, and we began to make our way back up the beach so she could change at the car.
As we were sauntering up, the sand protesting like a bag full of small birds I looked up at the sky to watch the hang-gliders. It occurred to me then, and I immediately voiced my curiosity about where they landed: I was quickly answered by a red shape hurtling past us, and a loud crash. We were standing on the landing area, marked out by two small red cones which neither of us had noticed.
We had been narrowly missed by a hang-glider, a grey haired man that was now being dragged down the beach by the heedless wind that had caught his wing. A small girl ran from the camp-site, shouting “Daddy? Daddy?!” and we stood like gawking idiots, paralysed by indecision. Luckily, the man was unharmed. He recovered quickly and collapsed the wing, then carried it to his truck, his daughter trailing behind and giving us evil looks. No-one else seemed upset, so we went back to the car and changed into swimsuits. Even this near-calamity was not enough to dampen our holiday spirit.
Looking back, swimming that day was not the greatest idea we had while in Australia. The beach was fairly cold by this point, even for our English sensibilities. The sun was going down, and the sea was choppy and unpredictable... Still, we ran down to the ocean with a kind of manic enthusiasm which is probably common among those who have spent the months leading up skidding around on ice under skies like beaten lead. And when we got into the water, it was at least a little warmer than the air. The waves were thrilling, and we splashed around like children while my family watched from the sand, wrapped in blankets against the bitter breeze. It was fun, but the surf got higher and higher, and we began to see bigger and bigger waves.
One of my best holiday photographs is also the last from this particular swimming expedition. It is a still of me with my hands thrown up in front of me, under a wave that looms well over my head.
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