Streaky Bay: there’s not much, and yet a whole world to say about it. My wildest ride so far, and one that seems most like a dream. It reminded me that no matter where you go, the chance for larger-than-life people and adventure are just around the corner, and that things are not always what they seem.
Streaky is halfway up the South Australian coast, a good 700 km away from Adelaide, and yet still 2,000 klicks from Perth (which I didn’t realize; I thought I’d be a lot closer to Perth after my 11 hour bus ride – which never fails to elicit a burst of laughter from people I say this to). It’s pretty much a postage-sized speck of habitation in a vast ocean of empty, rugged, wild land stretching out on one hand; and an actual ocean on the other. I had debated whether to email an oyster farmer or the proprietor of a large tract of land for a week’s stay. I was torn between the prospect of delicious, delicious oysters on the one hand; and the warm paragraph in the WWOOF book that was not very specific about what the property was all about, but oozed personality. In the end, I chose to email Wayne, a decision of inspiration, for he is one of the most outsized and outrageous, big hearted and frank, volcanic and tempestuous, magnetic and enveloping people I have ever met. Of course, the cast of characters doesn’t stop with Wayne, but he might as well represent the energy of 50% of the whole town.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Leaving Yankalilla, I spent a couple of days in Adelaide, largely working on a blog post at the YHA Central Adelaide, which turned into a bit of a base for me in the last month of my tenure in Australia. A very conveniently located, wonderfully staffed, comfortable hostel, I kept coming back between hosts and spent more time in with the hostel staff and long term residents than I did exploring the city. I had such a strong attraction to Adelaide though that I paradoxically never really felt the impetus to cram too much into my stays there, because I felt that I would be back and spend probably a good chunk of time exploring the city and its surrounds. Anyway.
I boarded the bus out to Streaky bright and early on a Thursday morning, as the bus service runs twice a week out there. The ride itself was uneventful, just spent most of it gazing at landscape, as it changed from the more lush Fleurieu environs to the rugged, scrub-brushed and red earthed vistas that I so love. Along the way, I crossed another animal off the list, spotting an emu along the side of the road. Did you know that emu daddies take care of the chicks and raise them, while emu mamas run off with new emu boyfriends? I think these emus are on to something…
The bus skirted the coast until Port Augusta, then cut cross the Eyre Peninsula’s top towards Streaky Bay and Ceduna. The coastline is jagged and largely uninhabited but for little townships here and there. The ocean is an incredible deep blue, stretching uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. The waters are home to the best oysters I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a few in my time), tuna, and everyone’s favourite: the Great White Shark. The coast along this part of Australia apparently also has some of the best surf spots in the world. Streaky Bay is home in equal parts to those who work in the fisheries, and those who have chosen to live there for their surfing passion. Not surprisingly, those two things often coincide, and you see men in their 30s and 40s and 50s with bulging muscle and with that unmistakable “surfer” look. It’s not a very feminine town (outside the wives and daughters of the families there) as the spot is more of an attraction to young surfers, who tend to be men. But is a lovely town, with everything one really needs to be comfortable in life: a pub, a restaurant, a bakery, a liquor store, a grocery, a church, and the beach at your doorstep. Just don’t swim too far out on your own.
Stepping off the bus in the dark, I cast about for which one of the waiting men might be Wayne. I’m not sure what exactly I expected, maybe a grizzled hippie of some stripe or another, but a man with a very boyish face and a mop of sandy brown, close cut curls thrust a massive hand my way. He is a bit taller than I am, and portly, but in a powerful, tightly packed, muscular way. I’m pretty sure if a car tried to mow him down, it would be the car that would sustain more damage. He grabbed my bag and tossed them in the back of his car, and without preamble, took me into his confidence.
On the half hour drive to his home, 25 km outside of town, I discovered that Wayne is a believer in telling it like it is, and that he is incredibly open about his life, which has had some epic twists and turns. For the rest of the week, the stories from back in the day had me entranced, fascinated and horrified by turns. Though he is an incredibly kind and generous man, I can totally see how in his youth his temper got the better of him.
As I write this, I think of the number of people who have “work hard, play hard” as a tagline on their social media, or dating profiles, or whatever, and I have to chuckle to myself. They have no idea what that means. Wayne is the ultimate example of hardcore living, a man who doesn’t look his 55 years but has seen and done more than a dozen of those yuppies who think binge drinking on the weekend is to “party hard”. He is someone who eats every morsel of life, from the good to the bad, without leaving a crumb on the plate. I just picture him and mom meeting each other and I think they must have been twins in another life.
While on the ride to the house, I learned about abalones and that they are a multimillion dollar industry held in the hands of a few who bought licenses in the 80s and early 90s for a few thousand, now worth millions. That he and his partner of 25 years have hosted all manner of WWOOFers over the years, one of which tried to kill them while they slept. And they still kept on taking people in. About his childhood, and his children, and a dozen other things that just blew my mind.
We hurtled along a bumpy track for nearly 40 minutes when we swung up a driveway and drove another 10 minutes along a winding road, until we arrived home. You know, it’s always such a trip to arrive at a new place. No matter what you’ve read about a place in the WWOOF book, or how people have described it in conversation or email, what you get and what you’ve imagined will differ wildly. But without fail (at least in my experience thus far), it’s felt like home. Wayne’s was no exception.
He and Vicki live in a tin house, which I suppose by all rights can be classified a massive shed in the Australian sense of the word, but which has, over the years, been turned into a homey spot. There’s a cheerful fire burning merrily in the little belly of the black wood stove, which seems to be ubiquitous in rural Australia. The windows are large and have lace curtains; there are facing love seats near the front door, dining table behind the love seats, and a kitchen at the far end of the house. The lounge and TV were centered around the stove, and the bedroom was facing the front door. Inside were Vicki and 5 little doggies, the blackest and scruffiest of which completely stole my heart. His name is Harry, and he is my little own beloved doggie, no matter how far away he is from me. Around the house is a large porch with awning, under which Wayne has hung his various surfboards and miscellany.
Wayne is an excellent cook and made a hearty dinner that night, where we talked about my life, their life, and what the needs were for the next week or so. Vicki is the calm, collected one, while Wayne is the excitable, scattered one, so together it seems to work. There was not much work by way of a garden, though at one point there was one, and a little menagerie of animals, but now, only the dogs remain. The main things to do around the house was split wood for the remaining of the winter season. I have to say, so far in terms of manual skill, I learned the most at Wayne’s.
He taught me how to use a wood splitter and an axe properly, and also a chainsaw. And to drive a skidoo and shoot a shotgun. The only thing I wanted to add on the list of things to learn from him was fight, but we ran out of time before that happened.
The days were sunny and hot, and we would spend the mornings and early afternoons splitting big tree trunks with the mechanic splitter into chunks small enough to fit into the stove. Vicki works as a special education assistant in town, so she would be gone from early morning until 4 in the afternoon, while we scampered around the property and alternated work with fun. And I had a great time with the wood, or helping around the yard in any way I could, especially when he taught me how to use the big chainsaw. It’s like I got to prove to myself that I can learn to be strong and independent, that I can fend for myself. That I can handle the big tools, and in some weird way, it symbolized that I can handle myself too. Maybe that’s why I love Australia so. It’s a place where I started feeling like I could fully take care of myself.
Wayne’s a wonderful teacher too. I suppose it may be because he’s worked construction for so many years and has had to teach a few new fellows over the years, so he’s patient: he shows you how to do something, then he lets you do it. He watches you, corrects you if you need correcting, but most importantly, most vitally, he radiates confidence in you. When he let me have the chainsaw, or when he told me to drive the jetski, and I was hanging back, saying no, I couldn’t possibly, he just pushed me forward, telling me to not be such a girl. “Trust yourself,” he said (or maybe he asked whether I did), and that’s when the penny dropped. This is the lesson here. To learn to trust myself, and to take the reins, even if I feel timid or afraid. To take the leap, like I had done when I bought that one way ticket, and trust that I can – whatever it may be.
You know how they say: “life is the classroom?” It’s true. You just have to pay attention.
Speaking of the jetski. Oh my god. Thinking back on this part of the trip, it seems surreal. I know I was there but it feels like something I watched on film. The second (or third?) day of my stay, Wayne tapped on the window of my bus (my room was a converted caravan/bus, heated with a camping radiating heater, and a surprisingly comfortable and cozy bed), and told me we were going out to sea. He handed me a wetsuit and hooked the jetski trailer to the back of the truck, and off we went.
It was a half hour drive to the drop-off (or rather the put-in) point along the coast. Looking at the ocean, it seemed rough, with some spectacular waves crashing into the cliffs, but Wayne looked unperturbed, so I shrugged and figured that I was not going to chicken out. The waves weren’t what really disturbed me though, even though they looked pretty intimidating: it was the sharks. I knew from my time in Byron Bay that this part of the continent was infested with great whites, and while attacks are much, much rarer than people tend to think they are, they still happen, and I was really not keen on being on that statistical oddity list. Wayne didn’t help by telling me he knew a guy a couple of years ago that got taken only ten meters off the coast. Though he said not to worry, for though they can swim in fairly shallow waters, they prefer to attack from below. Which is why diving is so safe (once you get to the bottom, that is).
We drove through a few sand dunes once we got the beach, and to a little sheltered cove where we put the jetski in. There were plenty of cars already parked a little ways up, with veteran surfers long up and on the water waiting to catch the waves. Wayne and I got on the jetski, and made for the waves. The sea was rough though, and we bounced along at god knows what speed, but fast enough that I hung on to his belt for dear life, praying that I would not go flying off, because hitting the water at that speed I was pretty sure was going to break something. It took about 15 minutes to get far enough out to really get into the swells, but boy, did we ever get into them.
What looked spectacular from the coast was insane on the water. The waves were coming in anywhere from 25 – 40 feet, with Wayne zipping up the face of them and turning in an arc to race back down them just as they were cresting, the barrel crashing down 5 or 10 meters behind us in a white-capped foamy roll of fury. “Look behind you!” He yelled over his shoulder, and when I whipped my head around and saw the wave crashing, I realized we were flying down a wall of water, and the fear just melted away, replaced by a surge of adrenaline.
“Holy f***!” was the only thing I could scream out, the wind tearing the sound away. I had never felt so exhilarated. We went up a few of these waves, before Wayne spotted a group of tow-surfers, and dropped me off with a few guys in a tin boat while he went to scale a few of the 40 foot plus waves that were cresting a little ways off. They were scary enough that he figured he should probably not risk it with me clinging to his back. It’s funny, sitting behind Wayne being jostled was fine, but sitting in the bottom of the tiny boat near the motor had me feeling sick in two seconds flat. There were a good few people out in the water, which took me by surprise, as I would have thought it too rough for full-on surfing. But some surfers were being towed on the back of jetskis, and a guy with a telephoto camera was taking pictures of surfers and ocean, while a volunteer lifeguard in a little motor boat kept an eye on the insane people risking their necks on the waves. I think he also was on shark-spotting duty.
After about 15 minutes Wayne came back and got me, as the seas were getting even rougher, and we drove back to the cove where we had parked the car. I was torn between my desire to make it back to the car in one piece, and my desire to spot a fin in the distance, just for the “holy shit” factor. The guys in the boat told me that the pointers didn’t really care if you were on the jetski or in the boat, if they wanted a piece of you, they’d torpedo the machines as well.
“Don’t the motors scare them off?” I asked, to which they replied with laughter.
“No, it actually kind of attracts them.”
The tiny tin structure we were on did not comfort me. I think if a big one really wanted to, it could snap the boat in two in one bite. Same deal for the jetski.
Once we were closer to shore and the waters calmed down a little bit, Wayne stopped the motor, and ordered me in front. Despite my protests, I swapped places with him, and brought us the rest of the way in. He hopped off to get the car to back the trailer into the water enough to put the jetski on, while I drove the jetski in big circles in the bay, thinking of all the awesome things I missed out on over the years because I was too frightened to put my hand to the tiller, as it were. As I write this, I am coming to a few realizations. I suppose at the time it didn’t really nest in my heart, maybe because I wasn’t paying attention then, but now that I reflect on my time there, a few lightbulbs are going off in my head and my heart.
Enter: hot surfer dude, Brad. (Hi Brad, if you’re reading this!)
Honestly, I need to buy a house in Streaky just to oogle the surfers.
Brad is a friend of the family, almost like a son to Wayne, and he came up from Adelaide for a long weekend to catch some waves, relax, and provide us all with company. He is a lovely man, a little on the quiet side, but I suppose that’s what happens when you spend so much time out on the water by yourself. He’s doing an aeronautical engineering apprenticeship in Adelaide at the moment, and was considering purchasing land near Streaky, as a block had just come up for sale.
We got along really well, and for a few days, the house had a wonderfully homey atmosphere: mom dad and the kids, as it were. I loved it. Brad took me out to the neighbour’s, the plot of land below Wayne’s on the hill, where the owner had brought up a train compartment that he then refitted as a house. It’s one of the coolest and most creative homes I’ve ever seen, overlooking the bay and the ocean. Poor Brad had to hang around while I took a million and one photos of the place, one gorgeous sunny morning. We then went to the shore, taking two of the doggies with us, splashing in the waves, the dogs having the time of their lives, racing up and down the sand dunes, sniffing every flower and clump of grass and stone.
On the second to last day he was going to be with us, he went body surfing, and I tagged along. I didn’t have a board, and we were going to go to a cove that was not sheltered enough for newbie swimming, so I just went to take photos, but it was a gift of a day. As I was taking snaps of the surfers catching waves, a pod of dolphins appeared. Maybe 8, maybe 10, I couldn’t count them all. And they started playing in the surf. My camera lost battery power about two minutes before they appeared, so I have no photos of them, but it’s clear in my mind’s eye, just as if it were a few moments ago. As the waves swelled and crested, it looked like someone had sliced the ocean with a knife, and you could see the dolphins suspended in the wave, stacked on top of each other. As the wave barreled and started its descent, you could see them race along side the surfboards, teasing the surfers. I just stood there, mouth open, desperately wanting to go jump into the water, but knowing it was icy cold and the waves were strong. In the summer, I am going to go back and I am going to find a good swimming spot and I will stay in the water until I see a dolphin, goddamnit!
Alas, the next day Brad had to go back to Adelaide and the grown-up world of work, and it was just Wayne and Vicki and me for another two days, which saw very little work, but a lot of fun. I remembered that Wayne and Vicki had gotten a shotgun after the incident of the insane WWOOFer, and I asked them if they would show me how to use it. They did and it was awesome! I now know why the gun-nuts in the States are so afraid of losing their ability to get guns: they’re incredibly fun. We got a couple of bullets out and checked the gun to make sure it wasn’t rusty or dented, and Wayne took a shot first at a tree stump in the distance, then handed the gun to me.
“Stand tall, with your knees slightly bent, the back end in the crook of your shoulder, line up the sightline, and release the safety,” he said. I did. I squeezed the trigger and BANG! buck-shot in the target. I even think I hit it! And the kickback wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be: there was a bit of recoil in the shoulder, but as long as you don’t tense up, and you absorb the shock rather than provide a wall for it to hit against, it’s not painful at all. I have a little bit of the bullet in my glasses case for as a souvenir. I wanted the bullet casing but we figured it might be a bit of an issue with airport security, even if it was only a casing.
And so, the week drew to a close, and it was time to head to the next destination. Wayne dropped me off at the Streaky restaurant, where I was to meet Steff, and head inland to a sheep station in the Outback, and learn what real station work is like. I said my goodbyes to Vicki in the morning, though I was going to stay with them overnight again on my way back to Adelaide, because Steff would come into Streaky again on Wednesday, but the bus wouldn’t leave till Thursday.
I loved my time at Streaky. It was very easy to grow to love Wayne and his family, and no matter where the winds take us, they’re in my heart always. Giving Wayne a final hug and a wave, I grabbed my bags and set off on a brand new adventure.
….
And other things around Streaky Bay
Love you writing and the adventure. I wish I could be there.
Definitely I want to meet Wayne!!!