Away Again
Part 1 of the Away Again series
Above: My morning ritual: beach, sunrise, swim, coffee.
I saw the sea eagle first, gliding low, searching for sleepy fish, riding the updraft from the small cliff face that rose above my chosen end of the beach. Looking below the eagle I glanced a dolphin’s unmistakable dorsal fin, then another, and another; a small pod no doubt looking for the same fish as their circling friend. Between the two and several hundred metres further out was the blow of a humpback whale followed by the slap of its pectoral fins; moments later came a smaller blow and smaller fins – a mother and calf. It is my first morning, I had been on the beach for less than thirty seconds, and it made me smile.
I walked on in ever-shortening shadow, the sunlight racing towards me along the sand as the sun rose higher and edged around the cliff behind me. Two hippie van-life chicks sat high up on the beach, caught in a meditative morning yoga trance, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed, and facing the rising sun. They missed the sea eagle, dolphins, and whales, which is both ironic and a shame. I suspect they would have been into that.
I nestled into a favourite hollow—a spot I’d found on a previous trip—just above the waterline, where the rock face meets the sand. It is quiet and mostly out of sight. I set up my little camp—towel, coffee moka pot, billy, hand-carved wooden ‘kuksa’ cup, Trangia stove et al—and went for a swim, my second of this adventure: the first was had yesterday afternoon, soon after I arrived: a ritual cleansing after several hours on my motorbike, a baptism giving me entrée into the secret world that would become the next few days. The swim was fine: a morning saltwater bath really. Just enough to shake the sleep from my body, to dive under a few small waves, and bodysurf a few more, to feel the ocean around me and welcome the day.
My coffee is poured, and, like my van-life companions, I too am now facing the rising sun, listening to the gentle waves fall onto the sloping shore while feeling myself warming and drying by the minute.
The eagle has gone, and the dolphins have moved on, but the whales have eased in much closer now. They are ‘pec slapping’, the mother teaching her offspring some ocean rhythms, tapping out the family song on an ocean drumhead. The calf does a few beats then gets distracted and leaps, breaching as high as it can to tell mum that school is out and it’s time for recess. I was smart and brought my binoculars with me this time. They were a gift I’d asked for last year.
‘What would you like for your birthday?’
‘Binoculars.’
‘Seriously?’
My family thought it was a bit weird, like Dad has now entered into a birdwatching stage of life and will soon be looking at tweed jackets and walking sticks – which is partly true. But for those like me who enjoy sitting on beaches and scanning the horizon for signs of whale life and sea eagles, binoculars make perfect sense. Despite them taking up some much-prized room in my saddle bags, this morning has made me glad I brought them.
The humpbacks have nearly gone. I can still see them but they’re heading south so I am gazing increasingly into the sun as I swing my binoculars in an easterly arc from north to south as the whales round the point. The mother is getting in on the breaching act now too, offering a few leaps in a joyous spirit of ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ playfulness. It is a long way to Antarctica and this mother and calf will leap and splash and play their way south, bonding as only a mother and child can.
I can faintly make out some sails through the binoculars. They are shrouded in the morning mist, simple shapes pressed deep into the background, impossible to see with the naked eye. The scene is reminiscent of a Turner painting, and one that makes me think of a ghost ship: sinister, hiding eerily behind the morning’s misty curtain, waiting to spring an attack while the whales play unsuspectingly nearby. Too many whales have played in full view of lurking ships. But these are different times, right?