Too Close to the Wind

by Richard Attree

  My mentor was a cool dude—for a teacher. He made a deal with me: study hard, pass my exams, and he’d give me his old kit whenever he bought new stuff. It wasn’t difficult. I already loved reading, learning, and now I had the ultimate incentive. I began studying, obsessively—school work and weather forecasts—searching for the Holy Grail: a day with strong wind and perfect waves.

  By the time I was a teenager I knew who I was. I had my identity. I’d always been an outsider, but now I was a member of a tribe. I might not be old enough to drink, but I could sit outside the Tavern and share the après-session stoke with them. I didn’t need alcohol, I had adrenaline, endorphins, and the Stoke. Windsurfers know what I’m talking about: the way you feel after a good session. No stress. No worries. Mate, it’s a great feeling, the Stoke!

  The Doctor saved me. Windsurfing was the sure fire way to escape life’s vale of tears. Still is! My dad had the booze, my mum had religion, I had windsurfing.

  Then the crash screwed up the economy. The Japs couldn’t afford our cray. Prices plummeted and you couldn’t give the bloody fish away. The flashy boats were up for sale and people started to drift off to Perth to look for work. The town was stuffed, but by then I was sick of the place and most of its population anyway.

  Mum knew I was being bullied—at home and at school. She understood why I didn’t trust anyone. She was the one person who didn’t mock my dreams of a better life, and somehow she found time to tutor me through high school.

  The bloke who owned the fish factory, the local squire, liked to flash his money around town so he built a library next to his cray plant, in between the church and the tavern (both of which were also his). I guess he thought it completed our lives and left us no reason to leave. It towered over the neighbouring buildings, a ridiculously grand edifice for such a dump; his way of saying: “fuck you plebs, you’re mine, I own you!” But it had books—piles of them.

  When I wasn’t windsurfing I was in his library reading everything, absorbing his books like a sponge. I wasn’t choosy. I just started at A and picked out anything that caught my eye until I reached Z. Literature, trashy novels, travel books, science journals, philosophy ... everything from ‘Anna Karenina’ to ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. It was as well rounded an education as anyone from our town had ever received.

  The cray magnate, mister Big Fish, built his library to ensnare us—to fill the gap in our lives between slaving in his factory, drinking our wages away in his tavern and repenting our sins in his church. But it was my way out of there. By the time the bottom blew out of the cray market and our town imploded, I’d grafted enough grades to grab a place at uni—the only one of us who’d ever managed it.

  Mind you, the way things turned out I’m not sure it was worth all the bad feelings, bad karma, bad blood. My folks couldn’t afford next month’s rent let alone my fees in Perth, so I had to borrow money from my brothers, my friends, Mr Big Fish, the government ... and I’m still paying for it. I had so much resentment and envy. Everyone else was stuck in that dead-end town, gutting fish for the rest of their lives, while I was living the Life of Reilly swanning around the college on the Swan River.

  It’s late in the afternoon before I begin to question whether I’ll be rescued. I’ve clung to hope all day but now the sun is sinking towards the horizon and I’m surrounded by water. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of mountains way in the distance but now I’m not even sure which of the islands is closest. The current is taking me away from Tenerife, between Gran Canaria and La Gomera. It’ll sweep me out past El Hierro and then there’s nothing for five thousand miles until the Caribbean.

  For the past few hours I’ve been clinging to my sanity, arguing with my demons, occupying myself with bizarre distractions. I spent an hour fashioning a hat out of my harness, congratulating myself for having the sense not to abandon it with my rig. It must look ridiculous strapped on under my chin but its design amused me and it protects me from the sun’s remorseless rays.

  “Yeah mate, you’ve fashioned this harness-hat” a voice-in-my-head mocks. “It could be the next big thing on the catwalk—if you ever make it back to civilisation.”

  After a full day without a drink I’m beyond thirst, drifting in and out of rationality. There’s an army of snakes in my head all trying to tunnel their way out through my skull. I’m delirious, dizzy, finding it increasingly difficult to balance on my board. I keep falling in the water and cackling with horrible laughter, dreaming of my days as a beginner windsurfer. I know I’m losing the plot. The voices are winning and I wonder how much longer I can stay alive, whether I’ll last the night without food or water. I haven’t given up yet but doubt is fighting hope in my addled brain.

  All day I’ve assumed someone would find me. Surely someone has noticed my absence and raised the alarm by now? The Salvamento Marítimo must be out looking for me. I keep looking up, expecting to catch a glimpse of the helicopter but all I see are clouds and a few seabirds. I was hoping a fishing boat might spot me but I’ve seen nothing since I broke the UJ. Soon it’ll be too dark anyway.

  I try my best to catch a fish to eat raw. For a while, it’s a game that keeps me busy. Every ten minutes a shoal of flying fish passes, flashes of silver as they leap. I flail around, clutching at thin air, inevitably ending up in the water cackling hysterically.

  A turtle swims beneath me, near enough to touch. He surfaces right next to me and for a moment we stare at each other. He reminds me of ET with his bulging eyes popping out of an alien head perched on top of that absurdly long neck. I’ve no idea what he thinks of me but it’s comforting to have company and I reach out to him. He gives me a last amused glance and dives deep, taking what remains of my hope with him.

  I gaze into the emptiness beneath me and try to hold back the black thoughts. A voice pops into my head to remind me of something I’d read in mister Big Fish’s library—a quote from the nineteenth-century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.’

  I studied Nietzsche at Uni. His ideas fascinated me but I struggled to understand them. Now I have plenty of time to ponder what he meant, sitting on my board, drifting into the darkness. Alone.

  I was an outsider again in Perth. It’s a boom town for multimillionaires and it’s also one of the most remote cities in the world—furthest from any other city that might make it think differently about itself. Everyone was smart, well dressed, successful … and I was this small-town surf-punk with dishevelled dreadlocks and ethnic tattoos. I’d escaped the cray factory but I was a fish out of water there, surrounded by middle-class white kids …

  Ah, right, I didn’t mention that did I? I’m what they call mixed race—that’s if ‘they’ are being polite. Some less politically correct bastards just called me an Abo, but in fact my ethnic roots are well and truly mixed up. The black genes come from my dad. He’s not a hundred per cent Aboriginal either—that might have given him more status these days, but he’s black enough to suffer the consequences. Mixed race blokes were stuck with the worst jobs on the boats. When not cleaning shit off the fan they were usually to be found drinking their lives away in the tavern.

  The white women in the factory poured scorn on my mum for marrying a blackfella. Her family were originally from Ireland and that gave the kids at my school yet more excuses to bully me. The white kids called me an “Abo bastard”, the black kids called me a “feckin Paddy eejit” and they all hated me because I was a “poncy nerd”.

  I could handle the name-calling—it just gave me a thicker skin. To my mind, the mix of ethnicities made me more interesting than the rest of ‘em. Irish Australians and Aboriginal people have a lot in common. They’ve both endured historical oppression by the British and this unites them as champions of the underdog. Irish Catholics treated the Aborigines as equals and have always been happy to intermarry, which is why Irish surnames are so prominent among Aboriginal activists.

  I was equally
proud of my Aboriginal and Irish roots but I hated my father and loved my mum, so when I left home I adopted her family name: Kelly. I had another reason for choosing her surname—she shared it with arguably the most famous, or perhaps the most infamous Irish Australian ever: Ned Kelly. Son of John ‘Red’ Kelly originally from Tipperary, the notorious outlaw lived a short, action-packed life during the late 1800s. Although he was a ruthless bandit and murderer he became something of a folk hero, a Robin Hood figure, and an anti-establishment role model for an outsider like me.

  At Uni I styled myself as an indigenous outlaw—a cross between Ned Kelly and the ‘angry young black man’—a working-class hero urging revolution to my fellow students. I was a loner, walled-in with my existential isolation, immersed in Nietzsche, Sartre, and all the bleakest philosophers I could find in the library. Not surprisingly, I had no friends … until I met Robo.

  The sun is low in the West now, a fiery ball sinking into the indigo sea. Ironically, the sunset is one of the most spectacular I’ve witnessed in the Canary Islands. Should I be bitter that nature has saved its best light show for my last evening, or shall I just let go and be grateful?

  I lie on my back and drift, gazing up at the sky as it goes through its repertoire of purples, pinks, reds, and golds. There’s a black dot in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun. For one glorious moment I think it’s a helicopter and wave my arms manically, like an inebriated cheerleader. But when I rub my salt-encrusted eyes and look again I realise it’s just a seagull.

  The bird has me in its sights. It dives towards me out of the sun, like a kamikaze pilot on his last mission. I’m expecting to be bombed with guano but it has more malevolent intentions. A moment later I’m fighting it for my eyes. I beat it away, using precious reserves of energy, but the bloody thing keeps attacking, stabbing at my face. The struggle goes on for several minutes before my tormentor gives a frustrated shriek and flies off to find easier prey, leaving me to clean my wounds with salt water.

  “That’s your life, right there” a bitter voice-in-my-head announces. “You never have a problem attracting them, but whenever you let them get too close they peck your eyes out!”

  I’ve never been lucky in love—or maybe it had more to do with me than luck. Perhaps I was just no good at relationships. I had no problem starting them but they never lasted long and they always ended messily. Women liked my surfy looks—the sun-bleached dreadlocks, the tanned muscles, the hardcore tattoos. They loved the cute smile, the soulful brown eyes, the way I made them feel in bed. I flitted from one relationship to the next but they were only ever physical, shallow. I’d built this wall around myself and they never got to know the real Nick—the complex individual behind the macho surf-punk. I always had a girlfriend, but never a lover. Whenever the ‘L word’ was mentioned I’d make my excuses and beat a hasty retreat, leaving only bitterness and regrets.

  My most recent failed fling was particularly messy. I’d stolen my best mate’s wife—never a good idea. My infatuation with her was brief. I never loved her, but it’s no exaggeration to say that I loved Robo—like a brother, you understand. Sure I already had a brother—two-and-a-half of ‘em to be precise, but the least said about them the better. My family and I had abandoned each other long ago. Robo, on the other hand … I could write a book about him.

  He was my windsurfing buddy, my business partner, and my last real friend. I met him in my first week at Uni, at the ludicrously named ‘freshers’ ball’. My attendance was purely ironic, obviously. I was an observer, a hardcore surf-punk Cinderella. But this wasn’t some glitzy fairytale ball. No, forget the image of dinner jackets and evening gowns, this was just a bog-standard disco with an extremely loud sound system and a few hundred drunk students looking for someone to grope.

  I was sitting behind a pillar in a dark corner, observing this spectacle as if it was a bizarre wildlife documentary, when I noticed a bloke similarly concealed behind the next pillar. He was older than me, bearded, wearing a Rip Curl teeshirt and smoking a joint. He met my eyes, shrugged towards the cavorting throng and offered me a smoke.

  “Yeah, thanks mate” I yelled over the techno beats, taking the joint and pulling on it. “So, you a surfer or what?” I pointed to the logo on his teeshirt.

  He grinned. “Na mate, windsurfer.”

  “Right. Me too.” I passed the joint back to him. “My name’s Nick. I just got here.”

  “G’day Nick. Welcome to this gathering of WA’s best young minds. I’m Rob” he shouted, shaking my hand. “It’s always good to meet another windsurfer. Where ya from? I don’t see many of you blackfellas on the water.”

  I told him where I grew up and he nodded, adding that my hometown was one of his favourite spots to sail.

  “That break in front of the pub—what’s it called ...”

  “You mean ‘South Passage’?”

  “Yeah mate, that’s the one. It’s a nice wave ... and handy for a glass of the amber nectar.”

  I grinned and nodded my agreement. I would have added that the Tavern was my home-from-home, but it was impossible to talk over the sound system now. For a while, we watched the preening, posing, mating rituals that passed for ‘dancing’ at a freshers’ ball.

  “What a bunch of wankers eh?” I yelled when the track ended. He laughed and suggested we find somewhere to sink a tinny in peace and talk windsurfing.

  Robo was a third-year student, which gave him considerably more credibility than my fellow freshers. He introduced me to his mates and I was soon a member of a select gang of outlaws and misfits. They lived in a communal squat and spent their time taking drugs, listening to obscure music and not saying much. My dreadlocked, tattooed Ned Kelly antihero fitted in perfectly. Robo was the only one who windsurfed so I guess he appreciated having someone he could talk to without their eyes glazing over.

  We started sailing together up and down the coast, driving thousands of k’s searching for perfect conditions. Whenever there was a good forecast we’d drop everything, jump in his ute and drive for twenty hours straight up the coast past my hometown, not stopping till we got to the end of the road: Gnaraloo. We’d wild camp up there for a few days and windsurf ourselves stupid on some of WA’s sickest waves. Then we’d fire up the ute and blast back past Perth, past the university, ignoring the urgent demands for academic work. We’d stop over at Margaret River, before cruising for another eighteen hours down to Esperance.

  We had some amazing adventures, Robo and I. My God, they were good times! We were a similar level on the water and we complemented each other well. He had a cool, controlled, smooth style, while I was more gung-ho, radical, crash-and-burn.

  Robo taught me to loop properly, threatening to stick a mast extension where the sun didn’t shine unless I landed one. My previous attempts had been little more than extravagant wipeouts, whereas his were controlled rotations. He showed me that there was more to it than big cojones. He taught me the value of technique, breaking a move down, visualisation … I taught him about spontaneity, living in the moment, trusting instinct.

  Robo made everything look easy, but really it was the result of a lot of thought. Sometimes I thought he was guilty of over-analysing things. “Don’t think” I’d yell at him. “Just do it!” We had our differences and sometimes there could be tension between us, but we were always there for each other when it mattered and we survived some sketchy situations together—rescued each other’s kit from the rocks, saved each other from drowning … We became brothers-in-arms, trusting each other as only those who’ve gone into combat together do.

  We clocked up a lifetime of experiences in his rusty old ute—and the stuff we used to talk about to keep awake on the road ... I was majoring in philosophy and I thought I was into some pretty heavy ideas but Robo, jeez! He got me into Carlos Castaneda and his ‘separate reality’. Robo was experimenting with psychoactive substances: mescaline, Magic Mushrooms, LSD and he took me through the origins of the psychedelic counterculture—start
ing with Aldous Huxley’s ‘Doors of Perception’ in the late 1950s and culminating in the 60s with the contrasting groups lead by Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey’s ‘Merry Pranksters’.1

  We tripped together a few times—more amazing, crazy adventures! We were like windsurfing Pranksters rather than followers of Leary’s somewhat po-faced, humourless cult. The Pranksters were a 60’s evolution of Jack Kerouac and the Beats. Like them, we were on the road, constantly on the move from one adventure to the next.

  Robo persuaded me to reveal more of myself than I ever had before. He could see through the dreadlocked surf-punk with the tribal tattoos and distinguish the real Nick from the fashion statement. My indigenous identity was etched on my skin—the tattoos were inspired by traditional Aboriginal art, but my tribal allegiance was skin deep. He encouraged me to delve deeper into my roots and explore what lay behind the symbols: The Dreamtime, Creation, the Ancestor Beings, the Laws of Existence.

  Windsurfing on that coast can be world-class but it’s not without its problems. The Doctor only does his thing for half the year, so what to do with the other half? And that’s only the half of it. The Doctor can be fickle. In a good season he hits twenty-five knots most days from November to April, but then there were the bad seasons … that’s when we got well and truly skunked, driving to the end of the road on a promise of wind and finding nada: a mirror-flat ocean, nobody there, nothingness.

  They were the pits, those windless days in Gnaraloo. When the Doctor didn’t blow we’d be tormented by stifling (>40c) temperatures and a plague of flies. The best way to spend days like that was in an air-conditioned room, not cooped up in Robo’s rust-bucket ute. A skunking meant enduring days of each other’s foibles: my drinking, his smoking; my farting, his snoring; my silence, his talking. Those days tested our relationship and fault lines sometimes appeared.