Photo courtesy of Vin Maskell
They meet at the tide. Jawbone Bay, let’s call it.
One is coming in from the water, one is heading out.
Not long after sunrise.
Half-a-dozen hot air balloons are looking to land, a few kilometres away.
One rides past the high school to the little bay on an orange bike, locks it to the fence near the track, near the snake signs.
Who’s going to steal a bike this early? The black swans?
One rides a red bike past sleeping houses, leaves it lying down, hidden, not far from the sand and the rocks.
Who’s going to be around at this hour? The foxes?
One is a strong swimmer, sometimes just takes goggles.
One is weak in the water, always needs the snorkel.
Not that it ever gets deep here. Not even at high tide.
Before they met in this context they met via the Almanac community, at a handful of gatherings.
But they seldom crossed paths otherwise. Maybe a nod to each other via the interweb. A silent chuckle now and then.
You strike up a kinship.
At this small marine sanctuary they keep the talk down.
It’s a place where you respect each other’s solitude.
Why else would you be here at this hour, at this once-secret spot?
Leave the talk to those a few hundred metres to the east, where the ever-increasing swimming groups fill the carpark, fill the deep water between the buoys, fill the long lines at the kiosk.
Leave the talk to the internet, to radio, to podcasts, to cafes, to bus-stops, to pubs, to the boundaries of sporting fields, to train stations, to workplaces, to dinner tables, to TV couches.
Leave the talk to chinwaggers and gasbaggers and yarn spinners.
Standing in the shallows, the two members of The Inner West Almanac Snorkelling Society briefly compare notes about stingrays and banjo sharks and sea urchins and plant life but then let each other go their way. One to reluctantly head home, one to head into the water. It’s a form of passing the baton.
The longest sentence they’ve probably said was about having seen more of each other, literally, this January than over all the years of the Almanackery.
They stood in their near nakedness, the light, knowing laughter heard only by the foxes, the snakes, and the black swans. And maybe the rays.
Read more from Vin Maskell here.
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About Vin Maskell
Founder and editor of Stereo Stories, a partner site of The Footy Almanac. Likes a gentle kick of the footy on a Sunday morning, when his back's not playing up. Been known to take a more than keen interest in scoreboards - the older the better.
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I love this Vin. Have shared it with the family who also enjoyed it. There is some question about your assessment of the “strong swimmer”. There is no dispute that I have a red bike.
Andrew
Ps – Helen was not offended by your snide reference to the swimming groups a few hundred metres to the East.
‘Snide’? Cheeky, maybe! If anything, I’m a little jealous of the those groups of swimmers, and their camaraderie. If I had any discipline I’d learn how to swim properly. Here’s a poem of a similar vein from 2021: https://vinmaskell.com/2021/08/20/wave-after-wave/
PS: this morning, after the rain, saw three rays all at once!
Excellent piece, Vin.
It had me thinking there are a number of disparate groups which all intersect daily on the waterfront at Williamstown: dog-walkers, joggers, cyclists, swimmers, paddle-boarders, coffee-drinkers, walkers. Some may pass by and make only the briefest contact, but others may issue a polite “good morning” or have a brief chat.