Escape

After sixteen days in the city, I needed an escape from the masses of people and cars. Relief came in the form of Coolangatta on the Gold Coast of Australia.

Home to some of the best surf in Australia (and perhaps the world?), the Gold Coast requires nothing beyond board-shorts and flip flops by day and a sundress at night—my kind of place. For as much as I appreciate the thrills of the city (hence my moves to Boston and Sydney), my roots are in a small, beach town and I intend to keep it that way. So three days on the white sandy beaches of the Gold Coast would hopefully provide the relief I needed.

We decided on Coolangatta because a friend of mine from high school had made the small town home during a month of his three-month surf trip to New Zealand, Australia and Bali. So we operated on surf time with him: up with the parrots, which sang from the trees beautifully and loudly just after daybreak.

After renting a car that was barely bigger than a Volkswagen Golf, we packed in—two surfboards running from front to back, two girls squished in the center and side seats of the rear, and one six-foot-five guy at the wheel.

Along the way to Bryon Bay we drove through a torrential downpour. Fortunately, in true tropical style, the storm passed as quickly as it came. Upon arrival the sun started peaking through the clouds.

Byron Bay boasted everything we were looking for: secluded beaches and great surf. My surf knowledge does not stretch far beyond your average non-surfer from a surf town; I know some lingo and some big names, et cetera, but not much. However, even I “woahed” out loud at the site of one guy being barreled at the beach we decided on. I had never before seen a wave like that, and I suddenly understood why my guy friends were off combing the world for the best waves. The guy shrugged off the congratulations that he was met with from the other four surfers at the beach, but the look of elation on his face was impossible to conceal.

Vast and expansive—they’re the only words to explain the setting: the ocean, the sand, the trees, but especially the sky was vast and expansive. Everything looked untouched, like the way it was millions of years ago. I’ve always said that if I could time travel to any other time, I would go to the time of dinosaurs; I have a fascination for the world before people touched it. I’m not counting on time travel, but after this weekend I can imagine better what the Jurassic era might have looked like. Laying on the delicate sand the color of bone, hugged by a seemingly-never ending grove of mixed trees, looking up at the sprawling sky, I could feel the curvature of the earth.

Mission accomplished. We’re rejuvenated.

Australia