Pilgrim Souls. Jan Murray
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lovely pastries was displayed in the windows.
I’m not by any means a sweet tooth. Quite the reverse. I go for salty and sour over sweet and sickly every time. But on this odd morning of my flight to nowhere, things were a little topsy-turvy.
Lord make me virtuous, but not right now, said St Augustine, a wily fellow.
Mania feeds on excess.
I opted for not one but two scrumptious-looking big fat almond and cream croissants dowsed in icing sugar, and was devouring the first treat, up to my ears in icing sugar and almond flakes, when I heard a croaky voice behind me.
‘G’day, love,’ said the tiny crone as she passed me on the pavement, hauling a couple of heavy string shopping bags, plus a pile of books, under each wing.
‘Hi, there. Let me help you. Where’s your car?’ I said.
‘Don’t have one, love. She’s okay. I can manage. This and a whole lot bloody more, I reckon. How y’doin, anyway?’ The old lady kept going while looking back over her shoulder at me. ‘It’s young Gloria, isn’t it, Mabel’s girl?’ she called out.
‘No. It’s Jan. I’m new around here. Just passing through,’ I said as I caught up to the woman I guessed to be well north of her eighties if crocodile skin was a pointer. ‘I love your skirt. Did you get it here ... in Byron?’
‘India,’ said the cheerful soul, handing over her load to me then, taking the sides of her hand-embroidered mirrored skirt, doing an agile swirl, flaring the skirt’s long hems out with a dainty kick of a sandaled foot. ‘You been there?’
‘To India?’
‘India, yep. Been there?’ By now she was relieving me of the bundles and starting to walk off again, expecting, I guess, that I keep up the pace alongside.
‘No. But one day I plan to.’
‘Good for you, love. Bye, bye for now. Might see y’round at the Rails, okay? Say hello to y’ mum for me won’t ya?’
‘Sure. See you. Bye.’ I stood for a moment, my eyes following her as she strode towards a pushbike leaning against a shop front.
She dumped her load in the bike basket, tucked up the hem of her skirt and then this cheery little octogenarian, with all the eagerness of a horny back-seat teenager willing to give pleasure, straddled the bicycle.
She turned to wave at me.
I smiled and waved back as she peddled off, bemused as I drove away, heading for the place the young waitress had advised.
By the time I'd gone a short way I was lost. There were no signposts to Suffolk Park. Only to the Lighthouse. I pulled over. I was at Clarkes Beach.
‘A long walk through that rainforest path up there then a steep climb to get to it,’ said the elderly, slow-jogging gent who called out to me through the Golf’s passenger window.
I hadn’t yet asked for directions, although I had leaned out the window and had been about to do so.
‘Sounds good,’ I said to the wiry old codger who seemed as if he were about to attack the climb himself. ‘Thanks.’ He had presumed I wanted to walk to the lighthouse. A reasonable presumption I would later learn. It’s a favourite nature and fitness trek of locals and tourists, alike.
‘That’s the lighthouse walk,’ he said, doubling back and jogging on the spot. ‘But if it’s solitude you’re after, love, then I’d give Clarkes a miss and keep heading down Bangalow Road. Turn off at the Suffolk Park pub. Clifford Street corner. Camping area at the bottom.... but turn left into Alcorn. You’ve got a lovely long beach there. No one’s gonna bother you. You look the thoughtful type to me.’
‘Y’reckon? Thanks.’
Seems Suffolk Park wasn’t letting go of me this morning.
After kitting myself up with instructions from the Samaritan on how to proceed to Suffolk Park I took off and within a few short minutes down Bangalow Road I was making the left at the hotel, at the Clifford Street corner, driving almost to the end where I turned the Golf left onto Alcorn Street as directed, and thinking that I should have invited the friendly jogger to join me. Manic people reach out to the world. Depressives retreat.
Alcorn was a street of ordinary-looking homes, some brick, some fibro, some timber, but typically holiday houses on huge flat blocks of land lining both sides of the street. There was the odd vacant block covered in ferns and pandanus trees but mostly the landscape was unexceptional. The beach was hidden by the houses.
At this point, I have to say, Suffolk Park seemed underwhelming. I was tempted to keep going. At the far end of the street I turned in to a shady cull-d-sac, parked the car and took the sandy track and steps down through the bushes to the beach.
Stunning!
The panorama took my breath away.
Laid out before me for as far as the eye could see were miles and miles of the whitest, purest beach fringed by sand hills and dune grasses and in all its aquamarine glory, a rolling, crashing surf. The magnificent Blue Pacific Ocean.
Imagine this in Europe, I thought once I’d caught my breath. There’d be wall-to-wall deck chairs and touts hitting on sun bathers like botflies on a carcass, hawking their trays of kitsch souvenirs and over-priced sticky umbrella cocktails. The Rivieras, French and Italian, have to suffer over-crowded oily dirty pebbled stretches of the Mediterranean as an excuse for their beaches. And don’t get me started on California’s much flaunted golden shores. Oil pumps blot the horizon.
‘Hi, how y’going?’ The young man stopped sprinting and strolled up to me, his hands on his hips, bending in the middle and straightening up to gasp hungrily at the air around him. ‘Sensational, hey?’ he said, straightening up and throwing his arms out to emphasize his point.
‘And what do they call this ‘sensational’ part of the world?’ I enquired, making sure to keep my eyes modestly focused on his facial features rather than letting them slip to the Speedos.
‘You’re at the far end of Tallows Beach. Broken Head’s the next around the headland, and that pile of rocks you can see out there? That’s Julian Rocks. The Bunjalung call it Nguthungulli.’
‘Nguthungulli, hey? Thanks. It’s magic.’
‘They reckon. See you!’
‘Bye.’
Coming upon a jogger in yellow budgies, running along the lonely strip was one thing but I wasn’t prepared for the man in full business suit and shiny shoes I saw stepping out from the dunes a little way up from me. He carried a clipboard and had a camera hanging on his chest.
‘G’day,’ I said as I came up to him. ‘What’s happening’
‘We’ve got a property for sale in there.’
‘A beachfront, hey? I bet they don’t come up all that often.’
‘Sell to the first person who walks through the door with the cash. That’s the owner’s instruction.’
Why not check out what this young pup was selling, I figured?
‘He just up and left for good, this time. Shot through. Had enough of the place, I guess,’ the salesman informed me as I followed him through thick undergrowth, and he held bracken and bushes out of my way as I ducked the spiky stuff and wondered what I was going to find at the end of this jungle trek.
‘Had a bit of trouble of one kind or another, so he decided to sell. Found another wave, I guess. That’s what they’re like around here.’ He seemed embarrassed to be showing me the property before his people had had a chance to tidy it up.
‘Can’t imagine where he is now could be better than what’s out front, there.’ I pointed over my shoulder to the beach.
‘You won’t think much of the property. Be prepared.’
‘A