mona vale – a slide show

The rope.

There was a large Norfolk pine at the northern side of the club, a couple of picnic tables in its shadow. The pine was a veteran of thousands of gales and had lost the top of its trunk many years ago. This had caused the lower branches to grow larger, longer, right over the tables.

Made it easy for the fellow to toss his rope over. However he did it. The police were all standing around his body that morning, early, only his feet visible. They had tossed a blanket over him and all we could see was a pair of old workboots. Nobody we knew. They reckoned he had been swinging in the air for most of the night.

Workboots.

The boy.

The boy would have only been about eight, maybe ten. Standing outside the door of the men’s changing room with a half-smile on his face. Sunday, very busy with people all about. Men, women and children. He had his dick in his hand and was slowly rubbing away at it, in the full view of everyone. Looking everyone in the eye. Smiling.

The stash.

The club faces east and wears the worst of any onshore breeze. Today just two of us were standing under the eaves watching the sea when a fellow hurried past us and into the gents toilet, he had a couple of magazines under his arm. Seconds later he came out and walked by once more. Too quick for a piss and now no magazines.

We went into the toilet and looked around, there behind a brick pillar high in the wall were the magazines, tucked away. A quick look was all that was necessary – pornography – the worst sort. The magazines used and used again. Waiting for their next reader, by appointment.

The attack.

Four of us were sitting out at Cooks Terrace picking up a few little peaks here and there. Three blokes who arrived together and myself, their two girlfriends up on the beach sunbaking. Nobody around. Except for a man walking down the pathway to the beach. He stopped about halfway down the path and crouched, then he rushed down to where the girls were and grabbed one of them by her ankles. I shouted at the three youths who had come down with the girls and pointed at the beach.

The man had grabbed at the girls’ bikini bottom and yanked it off. Then he ran back up the walkway with it and disappeared. The three boys made it to shore, the girls were hysterical, arms around each other. Later that afternoon I watched a lone man peering over the clifftops of Cooks Terrace, he looked familiar. The beach was empty. Cold.

The nude.

Cooks terrace is a section of cliff that separates Mona Vale and Warriewood beaches. It’s usually sanded up enough to enable someone to walk from one beach to the other around the large boulders that have come off the cliffs over time. Big stones, half a house.

A man was walking through the boulders with his two young daughters when they came upon the nude man lying there, amongst the rocks. A big man, in every sense. Lying there on his back. The man and his daughters retreated and after putting his finger to his lips he wadded up a large handful of wet sand and small rocks and lobbed it over the boulder that hid the nude man.

A bellow.

They ran off laughing.

The fisherman.

Cooks Terrace. Offshore, six foot, rights to the beach. One after another, a rare sandbank and the only other person down there was a beach fisherman. He was casting out into the channel. That’s where I wanted to paddle out and as I hit the water he whistled me up and waved me away. Fuck you I shouted and threw him the finger.

In a minute or two I was sitting well out in the deepwater, way beyond the break and I watched him wind up for a cast. It missed me by about six inches, then he gave me the finger. I waited for him to leave before I quit the waves.

The near drowning.

There is a small and exposed rocky section in the middle of the beach and at low tide an express rip runs all the water off from the gutters along the beach and funnels it back out to sea right there. Not that you can see the force of it, the water surface looks calm and inviting close in and that’s where the couple decided to take a swim. By the time the man jogged back they were almost out of their depth and in trouble, both of them trying to swim directly back to the beach. Almost out of their depth. Halfway out now. No patrols down here.

He stood and waited for them to notice him, and when they did he put his left arm out and pointed to his left. They struggled some more. The man didn’t move, just maintained his stance. Then they both turned to their right and waded six feet to the safety of a sandbank. He waited until they were about ten feet from the shore before jogging away.

header pic by alex novickov