Almanac Life: Yarrawonga Rhythm

 

 

The rhythm of Yarrawonga. We follow the shade around the elms as the hours tick away. The sun circles above and we shuffle to its relentless beat. Actually, the sun doesn’t circle, we circle it. Thanks Galileo. Good work.

 

The Passenger rests on my lap. Cormac McCarthy’s latest sweeping novel. He makes you work old Cormac. This one features the Kid, a hideous tormentor, and Western and Alice. Crumpled souls all of them. It’s a tortured piece of work. Brilliant and mad. If there is only one thing, he writes, then there are no things because the one thing has nothing to look at, no reference point, no location, no thought because thought is the result of conversation. Or something like that. My head hurt. I need to read this book about five times. He’s a genius.

 

“It has snowed lightly in the night and her frozen hair was gold and crystalline and her eyes were frozen and hard as stones.”

 

Sentence one. Holiday reading.

 

A kid yells out. Not one of mine thank goodness. Those days are gone.

 

“Can I have a lemonade Dad?”

 

“No”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because”

 

“Because why?”

 

“Because you have too many of them.”

 

He leans back in his chair and sips his Carlton Draught can.

 

“Beer?”

 

“Yes mate.”

 

A boat hums into the bank from out of the glare. Squeals accompany it. Kids on a blow up biscuit are flung in a circle as the boat turns hard left. They hit the wash. Some bounce out, some don’t. Joyous laughter. A summer laugh. Its light and breezy and frivolous and belongs to children. I remember it well. Winter laughs, though no less effective, are boisterous and heavy. They carry winter’s blackness on their edges. The distinction is clear.

 

“Ski?”

 

I’ve become a bit of a water snob as the years have progressed. Where once I would have skied around the Horn of Africa in a storm, now I need the water to be as close to mirror clear as it can get. Glassy. Still. It’s getting there. Tiny bugs dance across its surface, a sure sign the wind is dropping. I can almost sense the giant Murray Cod eyeing the bugs off from the depths. But they wait. They are patient and old. When the boats go, and the water becomes inky dark they pounce.

 

Cicadas croak it the shadows, singing their own operas. Cockies lark about above us. They always seem to be enjoying themselves. The heat is penetrating, its sting reaching nasty proportions.

 

I squeeze into my buoyancy suit. I need to take a deep breath before doing up the central zip. I’ve noticed that as 30 years of age turned into 40 and 50 and now nearly 60 the breath required to get the zip done up is increasing in magnitude. The suit must be shrinking. It’s the only explanation. I slide down the small embankment, ski in my left hand, and feel the Murray’s wisdom. The temperature is just this side of not too cool. Perfect. I stand on the ski so it sits on the lake’s bottom and bend over to get my left foot in the bindings. The binding’s cords get pulled tight until comfortable. The left foot binding is a rubber shoe-like contraption that wraps around ankle high. Once in I lean back and slip my right foot into the rear binding which is a simple foot wrap, like a Greek sandal. The water hurries down my back.

 

They throw me the rope and chug off to get the slack out of it. A bit over a third of the ski is out of the water on a sliding angle resting under my backside.

 

“Go!”

 

The boat roars and I’m suddenly wrestling with a V8 engine. Keep the pressure on the right foot pressing down, head up. Let the ski do the work. A good boat driver will pull you out of the water without too much fuss. Too slow and you feel like you’re drowning in slow motion. Too quickly and you need a shoulder reconstruction.

 

I’m up. No matter how many times I do it there is still a thrill in emerging out of the wash. Not quite like surfing a wave which is more exhilarating, like a helicopter lifting off, where you feel the ocean’s might rumbling under you. It’s simpler than that. But that is its beauty. The laws of physics dispel the boat’s power to the ski which is now a part of you. There is an intimacy about it.

 

The water is like silk but there is boat roll from Malibus further out in the lake, dragging other kids around in biscuits or knee boards or skis. Boat roll is bad. It causes the ski to bounce rather than glide. It also requires more work from the back leg to keep stable. That brings about fatigue which usually results in a stack. I pull out to the left of the wake and hit the roll. My ski bounces left then right uncontrollably, and I get pulled forward. Usually fatal. Imminent face plant. But I manage to bury my right foot, the back one, which recovers equilibrium and I hit the wake upright. Great save! Applause from the boat. Broad grins. We’ve all been there.

 

Jetting across the water on a ski is as close to flying as we can probably get without leaving the planet’s gravitational pull. Speed is good. It’s like you have the water at your mercy. It succumbs to both boat and ski which cut a swathe through it as if they are Moses himself.

 

After two circuits (each one about 2kms) I let go of the rope. Ski over. Heart rate up. Cardio work done for the day. Buoyancy suit off. Ski gloves rest on the ski in the sun amongst the other paraphernalia of summer water fun.

 

“Beer?”

 

“Yep”

 

“Good water?”

 

“Fabulous. Bit of boat roll……………………….”

 

“New gloves?”

 

“Yep. Christmas present. I call them my T1000s.”

 

Smiles.

 

“You idiot”

 

Arnie fought the T1000 Advanced Prototype in Terminator Two.

 

I shuffle my chair from 6 o’clock to 1 o’clock under the elm as the sun continues on its way to Europe. By about 5pm it will be positioned at 10 o’clock. We’ll have a few cans whilst keeping an eye on the water. Sometimes as the sun is perched on the horizon like The Big Orange in a Queensland paddock, and the twilight of the day is bringing with it the silence of the evening, skiing is at its best. Glassy water with warmth captured from the day’s heat, a subtle breeze that wouldn’t shake an autumn leaf from an elm, a purple sunset that fades to black, and the rumble of the boat sending the Cod into a deep dive.

 

“Dad can I have a lemonade?”

 

“No.”

 

More stories from Dips O’Donnell can be read Here.

 

 

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