Summer 1968

It’s Sunday at last.

When Dad announced at the tea table on Thursday after dinner that Sunday looked like being hot, and we were going to the beach, I jumped out of my seat and yelled HOORAY!

In celebration, I raced out of the front door after dinner. It was light and warm, with a hazy dusk of summer flowers. I told my exciting news of a trip to Rosebud on Sunday to every neighbourhood kid I could find. They were sometimes puzzled at my excitement, but mostly they were jealous.

Friday was such a long day at school. My school dress felt fresh and cool in the morning shadows, but by lunchtime my legs were sticking to the benches at school, and the air crawling through the rattling, classroom window hoarsely foreshadowed the weekend heat wave wind ahead.

Saturday went by even slower. The street was glazed with blazing concrete, and the rose bushes shrivelled against forlorn front fences. No one moved through the long suburban afternoon except bored children, and sullen cats. The thought of the beach the next day was a dream. As the cool evening breeze finally floated through the front door and the open windows, the neighbourhood sprinklers starting ticking and darting down the street, and Mum and Dad set out the esky and the boxes packed with food to take the next morning. We were leaving very early to complete our slow trek down the Nepean Freeway before the heat really set in, so everything needed to be ready to grab and go. The kitchen looked and smelt like a beach day picnic already.

I went to bed that night with my towel, bathers and beach dress draped carefully at the bottom of my bed. I could barely get to sleep thinking about the crystal, cold ocean. My dreams were full of gentle, wind flecked waves.

I woke up when it was just getting light, and jumped up to start on some breakfast. Jill was already up and soon the others appeared; Mum with the baby Carolyn, Dad and my older sisters: Kathryn, Helen. After gulping down my cornflakes, I threw on my bathers and my  towelling beach dress with the front zip that Santa bought me, and I was ready. While the big girls chatted in their room, and the boxes were packed into the car, Jill and I ran deliriously up and down the driveway, and then burst out into the quiet, morning street. At Rigden’s, I could see Jane in the front window watching television. She waved at us. We ran back down to meet Noel from next door. We told him we were going to Rosebud, and he threw his ball at us. We screamed and threw it back, and went back to check the car again.

I didn’t think Mum and the big girls would ever stop doing everything. I skipped up the driveway and climbed on the front gate, and then went inside. I got in someone’s way, who growled at me, so I ran outside again.

Finally, Dad finished packing our white Holden station wagon boot with all our food for the picnic. Around the food were crammed beach bags, towels, hats, fold up chairs, our yellow and blue beach umbrella, and the esky full of cold drinks, cold meats, salad, and grapes. Boxes of biscuits, apples and apricots precariously rested on top.

After what seemed like forever, Mum along with the baby, Kathryn and Helen appeared, laden with floral beach bags – and everyone piled into the car. I sat in the front with Mum who had Carolyn in her lap, and the three bigger girls sat in the back seat. We pulled out of Parkstone Avenue – and we were on our way!

Slowly the city woke up around us, and we passed over the river, moving away from the big city buildings, snaking our way slowly along the bay through cheerful, sandy suburbs. The sun was heating up, and with all windows down we were feeling the growing glare of hot air funnelling on to our legs, and the sweat prickling and tickling our backs.  The aching thirst for the seaside in my body was almost unbearable.

Jill and I always had a competition for who could see the ocean first. As I craned my neck and looked down each of the side streets, I felt so jealous of the kids who lived out here in these small, simple houses that hugged the beach roads.

Suddenly, it was there!! The startling blue of the cool, huge, sun-sparkling ocean snuck down the opening of one of the streets along Beach Road, and we were in sea land! Jill said she saw the water first, but I think she just wanted to win. I clapped and cheered anyway because I was so excited. I could smell the ocean – the salt, the waves, the seagulls crying! I could feel the spray and the sparkle, and almost hear the swimmers splashing through the hot wind rushing in the window.  I just couldn’t wait!

Slowly, the front yards became taken over by tee trees, and the sand crept further up along the nature strips. We veered to the right and there we suddenly were; driving along the beach. I stuck my head out of the open window and smelt the salty, sea air. It was the air of last Summer, of freedom and happiness, of a cool escape from the scorching sun, and an endless, sparkling, peaceful playground. I was ready to explode with joy.

The exhausted car finally found a shady spot under the musky perfumed tee trees at Rosebud, serenaded by a few hot, lonely crickets. We unloaded our picnic blanket and boxes of food, and all of us ravenously attacked the bread rolls, packing them with our own selection from cold meats, cheese, lettuce, beetroot, tomatoes, pickles, jam, or vegemite. I had my favourite: meat and sauce, a cup of icy cordial, sweet sultana grapes, and some Savoury Shapes.

It was hard to concentrate on eating, as hungry as I was, as I could hear the squawking of excited seagulls and the tiny cries of children splashing, that floated through the glazed sand dunes. It made me fidget and jump around, wandering in and out of the nearby trees. The family ate quickly as we were all hot, and happy to get to the water.

Helping grab what we could from the car, including the baby’s toys, swim rings, foam surfboards and bucket and spades, our overladen crowd staggered over the sand trail through twigs buried secretly waiting to stab at our soles, around lines of ants scurrying in the sandy grass, in and out of tee tree shadows which gave way to hot, stinging sand, where dunes rose up to the azure ocean entrance in a blaze of sun, heat, wind and blue sky

We were finally at the beach!

Our feet slid through the footsteps of the tide as we surveyed the scene.  We staked a large oval of uncrowded sand, and set up our camp for the day. The beach wasn’t busy yet, and the water was scattered with a sparse group of paddlers. I ran down to the water and felt it with my toes. The tide was out and the sand bars extended out for miles! Tiny specks of people near the horizon were only up to their waist. Mum called me back to put on my hat and some Coppertone, and told me not to get burnt.

We had to wait nearly an hour before swimming because those boys who drowned last Summer had not waited an hour after eating. It was agonising! I could splash around in the shallows which wasn’t hard at Rosebud, but all I wanted to do was dive down and see the world from beneath the water.

I kept asking Mum and Dad if it was time to go swimming yet, until finally they said “YES!”.  I picked up my surfboard and ran with Jill to the water and kept running until we hit a deep hollow where we could swim underwater. It was so cold on my head after the hot, late morning sun. I dived and dived again. I held my breath and ducked under, opening my eyes. The sun streamed down into the water onto the sand ridges under the tiny waves making shady lace patterns. I dug my toes along the satin sand under the water, and felt the perfect, patterned ridges collapse. I watched tiny little holes in the sand breathe and move. I saw flickering schools of fishes, dart and flip, transparent against the sand. Overhead, the sky was a deep, bright blue with magical, shape shifting clouds that looked like dolphins and mermaids and fish. I jumped over the tiny, fairy waves and splashed the sunny air. I sank down to my neck and moved along on my hands, singing a little song about the ocean. I floated on my back, and rolled head over heels like an underwater acrobat. I collected shells, picking out the sweetest shapes, and traced the shoreline, kicking and flicking the water as far as it would go through the warm shallows.

After being in the water for a long time, I went back to land and helped Carolyn build a castle and a moat.  I had something to eat again because I was starving. The big girls, shining with baby oil, were listening to their transistor radios, and sunbaking. Mum was watching the water out of the corner of her eye, and Jill sat beside her huddled in a towel.

The beach was full of people now. Little toddlers in frilly bikinis stumbled around whacking spades on the sand; chubby mums nursed babies at the water’s edge; dads pushed children upon surfboards out to the deeper water and groups of young men threw a tennis ball at each other splashing dramatically to catch it. Excited seagulls circled everywhere around lazy cricket games, and far off, outboard motorboats could be heard chuffing merrily around the bay.

The big excitement for the afternoon was when Mum and Dad came in for a swim. Dad would perform a dramatic run and silly dive, making us all laugh. Then he would blurt and back stroke, and grab the baby and take her for a swim as she squealed in delight.

Jill and I would line up for him to throw us out over the water and splash down out of control. It was so much fun! All too soon though, he would head back into shore.

Mum liked to stand in the shallows for ages, while we begged her to come in for a swim. Eventually she would sink into the water and rest on her back as she kicked along. We would swim up next to her, pretending to be baby dolphins diving around their mother, and we would squeal and giggle. She didn’t stay in the water very long either.

Carolyn loved splashing and filling up her bucket or sitting in the little waves and kicking her legs about. Then she would toddle up the beach to deposit a bucket of water in the hole dad dug for her, and wobble back to the water.

By late afternoon, I started to feel tired, and my eyes scratched with the sun. We sat under the umbrella sifting sand through our hands, until Dad called last swim.

We trudged back to the car in the tee trees, and I started to feel sunburnt, especially on my back and legs. We packed the hot, sticky car – my father insisting that every particle of sand was removed from our feet and flicked out of our towels before we clambered in. I sat in the back on the way home, and Jill got to sit in the front. We were all STARVING so we stopped in Frankston for fish and chips.

Mum divided up the chips and potato cakes between us on the newspaper, and we ate like we had not been fed in days. It tasted so good!

We set off for home, and as the beach turned back into the city, my shoulders and legs began to ache from the sunburn, and the sweaty plastic seats felt stuck to my salty, sandy legs. By the time we got home, my head was aching and my face was shining and red.

We jumped in the bath with the baby, and the bottom of the bath filled up with sand and tiny bits of seaweed. The warm water stung my red legs and back, but it still felt a bit better.

I climbed into my shortie pyjamas and went straight to bed. My eyes had almost closed by the time my head hit the pillow. During the night, turning over in bed, I could feel the hot, sunburn tearing at my skin. Yeow! I dreamed of swimming and darting with the fishes, and floating on my back in the blue.

The next morning, the air had changed, and it was cooler. When I put on my school dress, it hurt my back. I was burnt everywhere. That Coppertone hadn’t worked!

At school the kids laughed at my red legs, and teased me. They said I was as red as a lobster. But I didn’t care. None of them got to go to the beach yesterday. They had just been stuck at home in a heatwave, watching the midday movie or the cricket, trying to keep cool sitting in front of the fan with a wet face flannel.

I was lucky … I got to swim and play all day in the shimmering, cool, kind, vast, blue diamond ocean at Rosebud.