You must play the game of who sees the sea first. It is tradition or law or something. The sky looks like it might be the sea until that richer, truer blue reveals itself.

I don’t swim in the ocean but I let my ankles get salty. Let my forehead get pink. Then a walk in the bush. The sky grey on one side, clear on the other. The smell of the eucalypts, the laugh of a kookaburra, traces of echidnas. A sign saying to look out for koalas, with a koala sleeping obliging twenty feet away.

No signal or internet, but Scrabble, books, a pack of cards.

Two old dogs greeting each other ever so gently on the sand. Sulphur-crested cockatoos in the trees and galahs on the lawn. A car slowing to let a kangaroo jump off the road ahead. Skinks sunning on the boardwalk. A spider guarding the bathroom. A snake! A snake on the path!! And lots and lots of other people’s children.

Passion fruit ice cream. Battered flake. Hot chips and a pot of beer. Red wine and the pops of wood on the fire.

The coast road weaves in and out, in and out. Driving like a video game. View after view. In and a waterfall, a rocky cliff, a forest. Out and there’s the ocean. There’s the ocean. There’s the ocean.

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^{A version of this post was sent by email on the 23rd February 2020 as part of Internet Care Package – a weekly memoir project in the form of a newsletter. It also includes links to the best things I’ve found on the internet each week and occasional updates on my theatremaking. This blog is a select archive of those emails. Subscribe to get them right in your inbox.}

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