What, He Too Scared to Stand Up?

Last week I was at the beach with a mate and a busload of aboriginal kids from somewhere way inland pulled up in the carpark. These kids had never seen the ocean before. Two of the boys came up to us as we were waxing our surfboards. "What do you use those for?" He asked.
As we explained how you use a surfboard to ride waves, he pointed to another guy coming out of the surf with a bodyboard. "What about that one?"
"You lay on that and catch waves on your belly." I told him.
The second boy looks at me for a minute, obviously thinking. "What? He too scared to stand up?"


What Would It Be Like to see the Ocean for the First Time?


The boy crested the rise amidst whoops of laughter and catcalls from his friends. The coastal sun was belting down and he could feel the warmth on his bare back. Suddenly he was hit from behind, and a cackling figure bore him tumbling to the sugar-white sand. He opened his mouth to shout but only succeeded in copping a mouthful of sand and shell. The boy spat the grit from between his teeth and playfully punched his friend in the ribs before climbing to his feet and resuming the chase up the last sand dune to the beach. The others had already reached the crest by the time he got there and their awestruck gasps were carried away by the sea breeze, leaving no sound but the gentle lapping of the tide and the murmur of the whitewash as it rolled in to shore. The ocean was different to anything the boy had ever imagined, and not even Jimmy Walingiri’s stories came close to describing what the boy was seeing now. The long, gently sloping beach ran curving and swaying as far as his eyes could make out. He could see clearly where the dark blue became green and rolled in to lick at the white sand, and where the lines of waves began, and made their slow, tumbling way in to be demolished to spray and foam on the sand bar. The mottled colours spread as far as the boy could see, finally stretching to the edge of the earth where the sea would flow over like a waterfall to be recycled in space and become rain.