Anvil Clouds on the Horizon

Winter arrives first as wind, a hard, hurried thing that races over the hills and tumbles into the sea. Winter does strange things to this coastline. On some mornings the westerlies flatten the sea into a sheet of glass, a rare calm that feels almost holy. The water goes still and hard, as if someone has pressed a cold hand over its surface. Even the sandbar behaves differently in winter; waves break cleanly on its spine, a neat white fold that rises and falls like a slow breath. We have to cast behind it on days like this, sending the spinner out past the bar’s quiet shoulder. When a fish takes, you can see the blue of it flashing under the surface as you fight it ashore, a streak of colour against the winter grey. And always, dead centre on the horizon, those anvil‑shaped clouds gather — the winter signature — sitting heavy and deliberate, as if they are watching the whole coast think.

My legs always know it before I do. They tighten, seize, whisper their warnings through nerves that never healed properly. The westerlies come like a runaway train, rattling the dunes, spitting sand, arguing with the waves as if the whole coastline were a quarrel they intend to win.

The ocean feels it even before the gulls who are shunting along the waves’ edges. A sulking swell heaves under the west wind as it bites and nips at the surface, worrying the water into dark, restless folds. The sky above is a deep cobalt; none of summer’s forgiving cerulean; almost empty except for a few stray clouds scuttling low along the horizon like escapees making their run for freedom.

I stand on the verandah and feel the cool air breathing up through the boards, a familiar ghost. The scars on the backs of my legs are stiff and flaky this morning. Raised edges, thick as a badly sewn seam, each one a reminder of the two hundred and ten stitches that once held my right leg together. When I drag my jeans up, the ruined skin catches and pulls. I wince, but the pain is an old companion, not welcome but known.

As a child, I had been blown up by a Molotov cocktail. Much of the first decade of my life was spent in hospitals, learning the geography of wards and the language of nurses before I learned multiplication. Even now, in the cold, the fire I once survived crawls out from my bones and lies under my skin. It moves differently to the winter ache, deeper, older, a reminder that some injuries never fully leave; they simply change their hiding places.

I march on the spot, trying to force blood down to my ankles. It is a useless exercise; nothing stops the deep bone ache when harsh weather hits this part of the coast. The ache is older than I am, older than the village, older than the dunes. It feels geological.

On a summer day, this ocean paints the sky and clouds into her reflection. Sand warms the feet, and that warmth crawls up my skinny legs, searching for purchase or solace. But as autumn fades, the weather becomes unpredictable, swirling up from every direction. The sea suspends itself like a tightly stretched silicon trampoline. Gannets must tuck their wings tightly to pierce through that inhospitable skin and nail their prey with those formidable, weaponised beaks.

We locals watch the balls of baitfish that follow the northerly current. I call them glitterfish. The agitated surface between the shore and the horizon gives them away, a trembling silver tension. Fat grey gulls, endangered terns, and the daring gannets take turns spinning, soaring, diving in a frenzy of feeding. The whole coast becomes a theatre of hunger.

This little beach curves for two kilometres along the east coast of Australia. Somewhere deep in the hard sand at the edge of the waves lie my own two year old footprints, if I had the nose of a dog to find them. My ladies' Seiko dive watch with the orange band is under this beach too, along with my mother's quarter carat engagement ring. The sea keeps what it wants.

To the south, tucked under the headland of spiky grasses and tough leaved tuckeroo trees, are the rock pools of my childhood. Spiky sea urchins, black as pitch, roll slowly from one spine to the next. We poked our fingers into the softness of sea anemones until they shut themselves tight. "You are disrespecting their private parts," my father would say, half joking, half serious.

These were the pools where we spent three weeks when my siblings and I all caught chicken pox in the summer of 1952. That was how the village isolated the contagious, not with masks or rules, but with sunlight and saltwater.

Our village had forty three houses. Three children in most. We called them houses, but they were shacks, hardwood rectangles with tarry paper on the roofs, a living room, one bedroom, and a half built porch where the boys slept. Some kitchens clung to the outside wall like passengers not yet on the bus. The boards inside and out were almost black and shiny. When it rained on the tin roof, all we could do was listen as we played canasta.

Going to the toilet was a journey of fear. We had been warned about hookworms. The dunny was outside, a dark wooden box with a can beneath. We perched on the edge with our feet outstretched, trying to avoid imaginary worms. Once a week, or every three days depending on the season, someone would call, "Dunny man's coming!" A man in a truck would hoist the full can onto his shoulder, empty it, and return with a clean one. I used to wonder if new hookworms arrived with each replacement, but neither of my parents could explain them to my satisfaction.

My burns were thermal, full thickness, and I was nine. My brother had been inventing a lamp for our cubby house. It was the school holidays and our parents were at work, so we were unsupervised in the way children were in those days. I knocked over a bottle of methylated spirits, saturating my sandshoes and socks. When he lit the wick, his hands got hot and he dropped the lamp right onto my feet. Fire is fast. It does not ask permission. It simply takes.

Scars do not bother me now. I wear them proudly. I have even convinced American tourists they were from a shark bite. Pain and aches seem eternal each winter, so I search for activities that take me elsewhere in my mind. I was never able to do sport like other children, but I became expert in fishing and surfing. I am a creature of the water. When I see the ocean, I find myself.

Right now, the tides are perfect. I have rod, reel, and lures. It is time to catch a feed of fish. I head to the back beach because the wind and seas are coming down from their rage. Turmoil is everywhere, and this shoreline, which I love like a memorised poem, is a discourteous place today.

The air crackles on my hair and skin. I could be on a faraway planet. It smells of Cambrian times. Seabirds wheel high like tiny fighter jets, minuscule SR 71s, then fling themselves through the sea's skin. The booming swell comes and goes as I stand in a lost memory, echoes of a low incendiary growl within my ears or heart.

While I rig my twelve foot rod with a three ounce spinner, the atmospheric frenzy relays itself to the baitfish. Whitebait. They coil and roil outside the break in an organic, measured ballet. They have moved around from the front beach.

Tailor, streamlined predator, pelagic super fighter. My favourite. Silver, green, blue. A fish that looks like speed.

The spinner flicks through the glitterfish with clarity and glamour. The sand is cold, sending pain up through my shinbones. Better to be knee deep and numb. The water is warm against my flesh. Numb is how I need to be.

I ponder the peculiarity of my relationship with sea creatures. I know the deadly, the beautiful, the edible. I know the ones that glide like silk and the ones that strike like lightning. I know the ones that will kill you if you step wrongly.

As I cast and crank, the wattles and tallowwoods pump out their final blossoms behind me. Wattlebirds clack in the dying light. A willy wagtail claims ownership of the place with its sharp, insistent tail flicks.

Alone here, I am charged to the eyelids. Time comes and goes in waves and pleats, like the water I stand in. Time is moving through me, not me through time.

Again and again, the rod tip bends. The top third of the stick arches impossibly as I reel in and set drag. They fight in streamlined glory. I dispatch and bleed them before their silver and blue dulls. I ache with happiness as the wind rakes through my hair and thrums its atavistic rhythm along my taut line.

Then they are gone. The frenzy ends as suddenly as it began. I have my bag limit.

I stand exhausted, hands swollen, knuckles tight with salted skin and blood rimmed nails. The sky has folded itself into night. The last of the light clings to the horizon like something reluctant to leave.

The ache in my legs is still there, but it feels distant now, softened by salt and purpose. The fire of childhood and the cold of winter meet somewhere inside me, and neither wins. They simply coexist, two old forces that have shaped the way I move through the world.

The wind settles. The sea breathes. My body remembers itself.

I am a feather riding light.