Encounters…

The author

3 min readOct 17, 2019

On the road we meet people. Those encounters might last only a few minutes, yet in that time people reveal things about themselves and their lives. I make notes about these encounters so that I remember them. Sometimes I write these notes into coherent mini-stories, into vignettes. This one of those vignettes.

KEITH was looking through the publisher’s preview copy of his book.

“It comes out in August”, he told me.

His book is about the history of surfing at Port Macquarie, a surfing and tourism venue on the Mid-North Coast of NSW. That Port, as locals call it, became a famed surfing venue is on account of its long shoreline scalloped with the crescents of yellow sandy beaches. On good days, swells surging out of the Pacific crash in sprays of white foam. Sometimes, though, when those swells are not there, a languid sea glops disappointingly onto the sand or an onshore breeze flattens and confuses the sea.

We were in the Port Macquarie Surfing Museum, a museum not quite a museum yet, that is temporarily located in a shopfront on Port’s main street.

“This is one of those pop-up shopfronts”, Keith told me. “We have plans, on the wall over there, to build the museum on Town Beach. That’s probably a few years away.

“We have a volunteer roster here”, he said nodding towards Bob, a man perhaps in his early seventies, goatee beard, weathered-looking in the way that long-time surfers become, sitting at the table and taking life easy.

My first impression was that the museum was an enterprise of retirees, surfers who have lived in town for decades and who have found a new project. The young woman behind the computer, and Bob’s telling me that he worked at the local caravan park, put an end to that idea. Okay, not a retiree project completely, just mostly so.

“The book, the history of surfing at Port, is a local history of surfing here. There are old photos of the early years and more”, he added.

Keith is maybe in his sixties, tall, slim, hair cut short, clean-shaven, strong in that way that people get when they build their strength and endurance in the outdoors rather than developing that over-muscled physique of frequent gym inhabitants. Like Bob, Keith has the weathered look of someone who has spend a great deal of time outdoors.

There are people like Keith and Bob all along this coast. They inhabit small towns off the Pacific Highway and larger tourist towns. Many of them, those now in their later years, came to these places decades ago when they were young, when surfing had a reputation as a rebellious and edgy activity. Now, they are long-settled and established, reputable figures. On the surface, anyway.