I woke up early and headed out into a windy morning back toward Melbourne. It was a stupendous morning and felt glad to be up and about before the hordes.
Just past Sausage Gully (a beautiful Eucalyptus glade) I saw my first wild koala. As I approached, I couldn't quite make out just what I was seeing. A rabbit? A cat? Oh, I get it - a koala "bear". As I neared, the little fella started climbing a signpost, and scurried off as I passed.
I stopped once more in Lorne, for breakfast, by far the worst I've had in sometime. My "Eggs Florentine" arrived as fried eggs on a bed of spinach that could be better described as sopping wet than wilted, all on two pieces of under-toasted and cold white bread, garnished with unmelted grated cheese. And my cappuccino tasted like dirty mop water. Blech!
I stopped again an hour later down the road to have a look at Bell's beach, famous in my mind for its iconic inclusion as a crucial story device and setting in the film Point Break. As I drove down the crest toward the beach, flashing back to the film
I half expected to see Johnny Utah come speeding by with a forced look of determination on his unemoting visage.
I parked and, braving the wind, walked down to the overlook. I must say, it was a bit anticlimactic.
Still gorgeous, no doubt, but a bit of a letdown nonetheless. No 50 year storm. No cops swarming the sand. No Patrick Swayze out in the surf. Just a cliff and a big beach onto which were breaking little ripples that, I suppose, through a good stretch of the imagination, could be called waves (if only for their physical properties regardless of size). I'm sorry - am I being overdramatic? The warning signs were pretty amusing:
Let's see that last one again, shall we?
There were only two people on the beach: a father and his frolicking, wet-suited son. I was about to turn tail and head back up to the car when a thickly Southern California-joc/surfer-accented voice bellowed in my brain: "You gotta go down!!!"
Not one to disregard the words of God, or, in this case, Neo, I trotted down the steps to the beach. As was to be expected, the scene on the beach was not that much different than it had appeared from above.
I took a couple of photos, including this one, of the biggest wave the sea could seem to muster
and, flaunting my fanny (um, yeah I said fanny*) in the face of fate, returned to my car and pointed the bonnet and windscreen in the direction of Melbourne, fairly content, if only a wee bit disillusioned. "Ma Bell, I got the ill communication".
*Anyone who can tell me what the word "fanny" means in Aussie-speak gets a surprise.
