So here’s a nasty little gash in the West Australian coastline, where the ocean water surges and boils. The waves brutally invade the small beach before retreating again, only for the thin strip of sand to be reconquered by the next violent roller. The water, whipped by a constant south-westerly, heaves in before sucking back through deep channels that fill and empty with a steaming ferocity, hissing as the air rushes through the cramped spaces.
The beach itself is at the end of a tight gorge, the rocks wrapped in layers down the tight fissure that drains a now empty creek into the sea. From above, it’s like someone has thrust a blunt knife into the rocky coastline, taking the folded layers of stone and pushing them inland. The beach is framed by two shoulders of twisted rock; shoulders that defiantly jut into the water absorbing the constant drubbing, resolutely obstructing the oceans beating. The water strikes and shatters into sparkling droplets that refract the beating sun into thousands of small rainbows.
The jarring south-westerly pummels all.
Suddenly Frank is running towards the water as a wave rushes in, his head down into the wind. I am sitting on the northern rock shoulder and within a beat, the time it takes for his spindly legs to run two or three steps, my imagination runs through an entire excruciating scenario.
I see him getting too close, the wave reaching out and latching around his ankles, tripping him and sending him bouncing down on the wet sand. The wave slurps him back into the blue, through a gushing channel that takes him under momentarily, before he surfaces briefly, gasping and spluttering and utterly terrified. He looks directly at me, into my eyes with a desperate confusion, and then disappears.
‘Frank!’ I yell, but the wind flings my words back over me, never to be heard.
The wave cracks just metres offshore and the water floods towards the beach. Something about the sound, the almost perceptible vibration from the force of water, stops him in an instant and he starts to reverse, laughing with excitement as the speeding white edge of the pushing water just touches his feet. The snowy froth kisses his tiny toes as he clumsily runs backwards, stumbling through the sand.
‘Back further,’ I yell again, standing and gesticulating with my arm making sweeping arcs. He sees me and stops laughing. There’s a moment of puzzlement, my tone and urgency making him think he might be in trouble. I run down and get close to his salty face.
‘It’s alright, you just have to be careful,’ I explain. ‘The water can be really powerful here, so no closer.’
He nods and races back up the beach to his Mum, and a hug.
Occasionally, it’s the smallest spaces that count. Your feet from the edge of a cliff, the gap between your fingers and a flame, the void between each rushing car that passes. We marvel at distance, the expanse of nature and the impossible horizon of space and beyond. But sometimes little gaps hold more than the universe.
Big Country 