Went down early this morning after watching the swell waver around all week and when it was still this morning had a small surf at Gunna at low with only a few guys around and occasionally one of the set waves running off along the waist deep sandbank, and occasionally I got enough speed to make a couple. It was nice sitting out there, chatting with an old friend about poetry and books and kids and a whole lot of other stuff between sets.
posted by Warrick Wynne at Saturday, February 22, 2003

First pain-less surf for about six weeks today as my arms begins to come good. I was going to write about how good it felt to do those small things, to drive down early through Red Hill and Merricks, out of the blue sky and into a quick bright shower of rain, to wax the board up, to pull the wetsuit on with the sound of the wind and the waves around me.

And it did feel good. But the thing that struck me most this morning was the burnt out hillside over the surf break. Sometime, a week or so ago, a fire had gone through and the hills overlooking the beach were bare and black, studded with silver-white gums with their leaves all bronzed somehow. For the first time you could see the shape of the land, the ridges and the concaves and the gullies, and in the hillside an old water tank, and its lid further down the hill. It smelt of ash too, you could smell it out in the water, and see where the fire had begun, and, just before the houses on the road, been stopped. After all the talk about fires up around Omeo and Bright this week,it was strange and confronting to see evidence of them here; the grass burnt down to the high tide line.
posted by Warrick Wynne at Saturday, February 01, 2003