Articles

A wave of change had me all at sea

Karen Sparnon remembers the summer holiday after which nothing in her world would ever be the same again.

In 1965 I am pre-pubescent, awkward in my skin and with no role in the outside world. But it is a floodlit year, suspended between innocence and change.

On Boxing Day we set off for our six-week annual summer holidays on the Ocean Grove foreshore. Seven days before, Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker had escaped from Pentridge Prison. My parents appear 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 nestle into the back of the old Dodge; my companion, an enormous ham, is snug in multiple pillowslips. There is 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 stable, our mothers chat about cooking times for chicken and plum pudding, and incense sweetens the air.

Each year we apply for a foreshore campsite, a ballot ensues in some far-off office and the lucky win a flat, sandy patch framed by tea tree. It is only a two-hour drive to the beach, but from our suburb to the city I count the traffic lights gained and lost. We buy fish and chips at Werribee and purr along Geelong Road, nibbling from greasy squares of white paper. At Geelong we draw lots to see if we will travel to our site via Barwon Heads or Ocean Grove. Ocean Grove wins but the road that stretches between the two towns seems as long as the Nullarbor Plain.

For weeks prior to Christmas, Dad packs the trailer until it is bulbous and bound by ropes. The camping gear 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, as will the chunky wooden bedside cupboards - sourced from a second-hand shop and stowed in the shed with anticipatory glee.

We eye our neighbours' new gear with alternate envy and complacency. Innovation is prized as camping shops replete with gadgetry are yet to appear. In our patch of foreshore, caravans belong to the wealthy and line the tracks of what we call the foreshore's inner suburbs. We envy the shelter they provide from rain and storms but are proud of our tents with baby picket fences and garden gnomes, with checked curtains, and ice chests refilled each morning by the ice-man who chips at the blocks with a dagger-like blade.

When the last tent peg is hammered into the sand, our holiday begins and I lose track of time. During early forays I watch out, but when no shadow darkens my path I scoot along the dune tracks, ducking under the low tea tree. Air and sand are hot and in the dips I burrow until the space is cool and deep enough to hold my body. Nobody asks where I've been. Mum pulls the ham from its cloth wrapping and it is ham sandwiches with homemade pickle, or ham salad, with 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?"

I lie on the warm camp bed and ponder the relationship between ham and drowning while I read the Women's Weekly and Mum and Dad sleep off lunch. When they stir I scramble into my bathers and we walk to the beach, where, shivering after a long swim, I watch as Dad rolls in the sand until his limbs resemble crumbed lamb chops.

Mum takes off her sandals and walks along the beach with her face to the sea. Egotist that I am, I cannot help but notice her contentment as she returns an hour later with fresh cream buns from the store. By this time red patches glow on my pale skin. For the next few days I visit the sea only after the sun begins to sink. Transparent ribbons peel off my back and shoulders.

In a primitive shower block we put sixpence in the slot for hot water. I wear Dad's thongs, for the floor is muddied and squelches between unwary toes. As I wait my turn in the queue, I watch women heave breasts from tight swimsuits and finger my own pink nipples, wondering at just such an explosion. The children I waited a year to play with have separated into girls and young women and are no longer all scrawny and sunburnt, plucking at the sagging seats and drooping necklines of our Christmas present bathers. As babies hide behind their hands and believe you can't see them, I wrap myself in an oversize beach towel and hope to disappear.

In the evenings we gather in each other's camps and play card games with periwinkles for counters. Cards slap against a flimsy table piled in the centre with homemade shortbread and fruitcake. Late at night we straggle home to bed and listen to the hiss as the gas lamp is extinguished and there is nothing but dark and the crash of waves.

We have bonfires on the beach where we cook whatever fish Dad has caught that day. Our neighbours join in and teenagers in pedal pushers and tight tops strum guitars. The girls have spent the afternoon hidden away in hair rollers, applying nail polish and make-up. They are what I hope to become.

Midway through January, Ryan and Walker are recaptured. Dad returns to work and drives back on theweekends. Mum and I 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 dip into the channel that sends us hurtling back to the edge.

"Watch out for the rip," says Mum. And I wonder at the current coursing through the river like an underwater spectre. At the first sign of wind Mum 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 spotlit times in our lives mark personal changes. Perhaps this is all it was; a girl aware of a budding body and the world around her. Or maybe it was the drama unfolding on our departure for camp when Ryan and 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 time to move on. But those final holidays are luminous with longing and they are framed by these larger tragedies.

And on warm days when 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.

Published in The Age, Tuesday, December 26, 2006