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Arms outstretched, ready to take off, I then soar down the face of the wave. Freedom, for just a moment. Bang! Nose grazed as I’m dumped into the tightly packed sand. I try to curl myself into a human ball; instead, my body is thrashing through the foam. My Speedos are not where they should be. However, the sense of exhilaration means I’m set to do it all again as I dive under the waves and swim out the back to where the waves are about to break.
As I close in on my 60th birthday, it’s a chance to bodysurf down memory lane to Avoca Beach. Those boyhood memories are crystal-clear, just like the surf of this NSW Central Coast beach.
Fifty years ago, Mum and Dad would haul the Holden, packed with four kids, past the F3 freeway toll-gates to Avoca Beach. It was the start of a summer journey that has never really stopped.
Back then, it was a holiday treat for the Overton kids, staying a week in an apartment rental, one street back from the beach. At the time, Dad was a young anaesthetist at the Children’s Hospital at Camperdown and he would only take one week of annual leave a year.
All these years later, he still has that familiar refrain: “I could have bought a block right on the beach at South Avoca for way under 10 grand”. Of course, he didn’t earn that much back then.
Mum and Dad did eventually manage to buy a small apartment, a few streets back from the sand. But I’m getting ahead of myself …
An Avoca Beach holiday became a constant in our lives. I still remember catching my first fish, standing on the squeaky sand, casting out into the surf. I had one of my first kisses around a bonfire. And long before I understood the dangers of too much sun, I used to enjoy peeling my skin after a long day on the beach.
In between those hours of sunshine, I’d race back to the unit for lunch where Mum would have fresh white bread, slathered with butter and topped with canned tuna and sliced, sweet tomatoes. Those sandwiches would sustain me for the afternoon’s bodysurfing, sunbaking and trying to impress the girls.
Fast-forward from those years to the times when Jessica and I would walk the length of the beach together. It was the early days of our relationship and we’d started to gently navigate what a future together might look like.
We came back to that beach as newlyweds, parents-to-be and then parents! Our children Allegra and Giselle, wading through that same rock pool that I’d found my first seashells in. Now here I was, sharing their joy; checking out a seashell with them, building a sandcastle and digging giant holes in the sand.
And what a joy to teach them how to bodysurf and how to curl themselves into a ball more successfully than I had done! Such simple holidays, doing the same special things that had given me such happy childhood memories. For me, it was like winning the lottery.
On a rainy day at Avoca, the local theatre was the place to be. A cat, curled up asleep under the old chairs; it was a place frozen in time. Munching on choc tops, we’d take our girls there, sitting on the same seats I sat in as a little boy.
And then it would be time to go home and back to the grind of life. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world as a reporter for 60 Minutes, and still Avoca Beach is the happiest place I have ever been. So every year, as we waved goodbye to the Norfolk Island pines along the beachfront, I’d think: I can’t wait for next year.
Peter Overton is a journalist and the presenter for Nine’s nightly news.
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