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It started with a chance conversation at a children’s birthday party. A Sydney-based couple we knew from pre-school told us they’d held the lease on a Central Coast beach shack for several years but were about to give it up.
Their kids had grown older and school sport was now dominating their weekends. Would we be interested in taking it over? It was unrenovated, still in its original 1970s condition, they said, but it was in a great position, in a cute little town and we’d be welcome to keep the furniture – most of it gleaned from op shops, council clean-ups and friends’ chuck-outs.
It sounded like a marginal proposition but we drove up to take a look and signed on almost immediately.
That was the start of our 20-year (and counting) relationship with Pearl Beach. Every passing year seems to build a stronger connection to the place as the layers of memory slowly accumulate and settle: the many Christmases; the celebrations of milestones; the times when a family member has needed to come here to study, or write, or find their soul again. It’s a place where grown-up kids, adults now, revert to younger, more playful versions of themselves, encouraging us to do the same.
Crosswords on “Pearlie”.Credit:
We bring overseas or interstate visitors here, who marvel at the fact that on weekdays there’s usually only a handful of people on the sand, dog-walkers or fishers – and often, in midwinter, nobody at all.
“Pearlie”, as everyone in our family calls it, is not a beach for everyone. There’s a dangerous dump at the northern end (the beach is unpatrolled) and no waves suitable for surfing (though you can catch a break at the next beach along, at Umina).
Pearl’s sole cafe and restaurant are currently closed, the former a victim of the economic times, the latter of a recent fire. But there’s a never-ceasing magic in its shape-shifting, in the way the tides and the weather are constantly re-sculpting the beach so that various creeks from the national park or the lagoon may carve an entirely different path across the sand from one month to the next.
On a calm morning the ocean pool at the southern end holds a mirror to the sky, while a local rule protecting the town’s mature trees ensures a thriving (and joyously noisy) population of native birds.
In addition to all this it’s the simple little run-down house, defiantly unrenovated, that exerts the real pull, thumbing its nose at all the glossy, glassy mansions that have gone up nearby. (Would we want one of them? Not really – what’s the point of a beach house if it’s just another iteration of everything you’ve got back home?)
On a calm morning the ocean pool at the southern end holds a mirror to the sky.Credit: Nick Moir
Walking through the door is like throwing on a comfortable old gown: the three tiny bedrooms, with two bunk beds miraculously squeezed into one of them; the homemade art on the walls; the sofas someone gave us 15 years ago; a garage filled with second-hand bikes; and a sturdy old wooden deck with a view of the street, the place where we hang out on long summer evenings, and where friends and neighbours call in for a beer and a yarn. It’s a house that has dropped out of time, that reminds us of a simpler way to live.
One day a cashed-up investor will come for it, and it will vanish. When that day comes we’ll stand on top of Mount Ettalong ridge and look down over Pearlie and point out where our weatherboard Tardis used to stand. But hopefully not for a few years yet.
Deborah Snow is former associate editor and senior writer at the Herald.
