I love the ocean, even as a sinking, ginger front-rower. Even if the ocean hates me

2 months ago 17

Australian summers are synonymous with beaches: an unbreakable part of our national psyche, a gathering place we hold dear. A place that belongs to everyone, to holiday, celebrate, rejuvenate and heal. In this summer series, we asked local identities and journalists to tell us about their favourite spot.

There’s a photo – mercifully lost somewhere in the depths of Mum’s storage labyrinth – of a pudgy, pale, red-headed five-year-old encountering the ocean for the first time.

No Mickey Mouse shirt, but the local paper did chronicle my early beach exploits.

Wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, sand and sunscreen in dump-truck quantities, I’m having the time of my life in the shallows at Manly.

Until this point, all I’ve known for five years is red dirt, winter frosts and sheep shit.

But this first entry to salt water is the start of an enduring, often tumultuous relationship I now can’t live without. I love the ocean. At best, it tolerates me. Salt water’s scorn is not without cause.

There is my Irish farming heritage and lack of pigment, along with the bodily proportions of a third-grade tight-head prop and buoyancy of the entire front row. I am no water baby.

Despite being entirely unsuited to even looking at the big blue brine, I have ridden waves the globe over. Worked on dive boats and played underwater tour guide in the world’s cleanest tropical waters.

As the Herald’s alleged surfing reporter, I have bluffed my way through interviews with world champions from Kelly Slater and Layne Beachley to Mick Fanning, Steph Gilmore and Molly Picklum.

Thirty years after that Mickey Mouse-clad debut at Manly, no matter what the ocean does now, it’s well and truly stuck with me. I’ll keep coming back.

Numerous broken and dinged surfboards, including one snapped clean in two an hour after purchase? Not going to stop me; there’s always another expensive piece of epoxy around the corner.

The first date that ended in the poor girl’s panic attack while caught in a rip at Wanda? I came out of that looking like a ginger Hasselhoff, slowly paddling us into shore and a relationship.

This board lasted for all of about 10 minutes of its one and only surf.

The sea urchin stomped on in Colombia? Briefly agonising, sure. But I had learnt the Spanish verb for “urinate” a week earlier. So I politely rebuffed offers from the little old women of Playa Blanca, selling pain relief for 5000 pesos a pop.

As far as breaking and bashing boards into submission, I at least have the comfort of safety in numbers.

A request for photos to a WhatsApp chat of surfing mates spewed forth a veritable cave of digital wonders – snaps of broken boards, limbs and dreams – within the hour. A nod to the man who watched one shortboard fly off his campervan as he drove out of Dunedoo, NSW, roughly 400 kilometres from the coast.

Any water-goer worth their salt (and especially those who aren’t) has a sketchy tale or two of escape from giant surf worth spinning. Again, worthy acknowledgement of the mate who sparked an eastern suburbs manhunt one extra large day by abandoning his surf ski, swimming his way in and walking home, oblivious to the panic an empty vessel bobbing into the beach would raise.

But Portugal? Fair play – Portugal rattled me. The Atlantic Ocean does not suffer fools. And this day in 2022 it was old-man-sending-back-soup-in-a-deli angry.

When Nazare fires, anyone within spitting distance gets out of the water, obviously, and makes for the cliffs above the world’s biggest surfable wave.

Just last month the famed Portuguese resort town was buffeted by 20-metre monsters, prompting a mad scramble by surfing’s most proficient lunatics for the WSL’s Big Wave Challenge.

Being an idiot, when a swell half this size rolled around as I trundled around the country with a van and rented board, I decided to head in the opposite direction. I’d find my own, manageable giant to ride.

I found Praia das Moitas, 30 minutes or so west of Lisbon, and, to my eye, suitably tucked away from the worst the Atlantic could serve up.

Maya Gabeira from Brazil rides a wave during the Nazare Big Wave Challenge surfing tournament at Praia do Norte in Portugal. Walsh headed further afield to find a more “manageable” wave to surf.

Typically, it’s a fatter, softer right-hander that breaks in front of a 200-metre man-made jetty, with the nearby Monte Estoril train station, an oceanfront promenade and numerous restaurants overlooking the wave. In other words, an audience.

I did manage to ride my giant – just the one – that day. And I came out unscathed, despite realising instantly that I was wildly underqualified and had no business doing so.

That was excruciatingly clear when I looked to paddle into shore, only to get as far as the wrong side of the 200-metre jetty.

The good folk of Estoril slowly began to realise that this show required audience participation.

I maintain I wasn’t in true, immediate danger. The Atlantic was thumping me into the concrete for fun; I had no real chance of scrambling up it.

But I had jettisoned the rental board and the leg-rope that threatened to get caught under a rock and drag me under – exactly what you’re not meant to do in this situation.

The board was last seen careening off to Morocco and, with a wetsuit keeping me afloat, I was confident of making it at least halfway.

Half a dozen punters ensured I didn’t need to, grabbing a couple of belts from a nearby jiu-jitsu gym, looping them together and dragging me up to safety.

Beyond grateful and beyond mortified, I drank for the next eight hours, then slept for the following 16.

It took me three or four days to get back in the water and I’m significantly more careful with when, and where, I throw myself in now.

If that’s not progress towards a healthy relationship, what is?