Chapter Twenty-nine

It was lovely midsummer weather, and when our first leave came up I remembered the waves I had seen over Newquay. I broached the subject with Smithy. He was no surfer and I tried to talk him into it without success.

It was the first Saturday in August when I left, which didn’t mean anything to me until I arrived at Waterloo Station to catch my train to Cornwall. Here I found to my astonishment great queues stretching for hundreds of yards and comprising a heterogenous collection of humanity. Then I found it was Bank Holiday, England’s famous weekend when Londoners, as though drawn by some migratory instinct, make for the sea and holiday resorts.

The queue for my destination was four hundred yards long. To my amazement I found some of its weary members had waited patiently for as much as twenty hours, and even so it was uncertain they would get aboard the next train.

It was here I found the advantage of being an officer. I went along to the RTO and explained my predicament. His reaction was immediate. ‘Just come with me, sir.’ So, past the groups of tired travellers, squabbling kids and irritable parents I walked.

Near the top of the queue I passed a group of Australian erks and a strident voice demanded, ‘Where are you going, bludger?’ My escort didn’t even deign to look back, but I turned and gave them a derisive fingers-up sign. At this an affected falsetto voice said, ‘Oh, you ain’t got no refinery!’, and another said, ‘He’s a gunner. He wouldn’t know any better.’

At the top of the queue, under the hostile glances of its long-suffering members, the RTO said to the attendant in charge of the barrier, ‘Officer on operational transfer.’ This worthy unlocked the iron gate and, opening it a few inches, let me slide through. I felt a heel and thanked the Lord for the Englishman’s long-accepted habit of having his nose ground in the dirt by officialdom.

I had hardly gone twenty yards when I heard a clatter behind me and, turning, saw I had beaten the opening by only seconds and a surging mob of humanity was bearing down on me like a stampeding buffalo herd. That was enough for me and I kept going till the first surge, like a wave breaking over the shore, exhausted itself on the nearest carriages. I was inside and settled in a corner seat before the second wave broke into my carriage.

All my experience of Test Match crowds or the Easter Show push faded into insignificance in comparison with this tidal wave of English holidaymakers. No quarter was given and none asked by either sex. By judicious use of elbows, umbrellas, suitcases, pointed heels and sheer fighting spirit the women more than held their own. The train was filled in a twinkling. Compartments that normally held six and eight now housed sixteen and twenty. Corridors were packed tight with less fortunate but nevertheless triumphant travellers. The voices of innumerable mothers arose plaintively on the heavy air calling for lost young who howled dismally from all points of the compass. Outside, hundreds of the luckless sought to accomplish the impossible and cram one more sweating body into the now immovable mass.

Here and there arguments and an odd brawl broke out as disappointment, frustration and the rigours of their long wait proved too much even for English good humour and patience. Gradually, helpful police and harassed officials restored order and the unlucky ones were herded back into the interminable queue to wait a further ten hours for the next train.

While this commotion was going on outside, a reshuffling of bodies and all the paraphernalia that an Englishman takes on his holidays was going on inside. The carriage had packed to bursting point and I offered a cute little blonde a portion of my seat, and finally my knee. Everyone helped everyone else, so by the time the train started the mass had sorted itself into some sort of order and the cheerful British acceptance of the impossible had manifested itself.

Before long everyone knew everybody else, where they came from and where they were going. The blonde and her cobber, a brunette, were bound for Newquay. I said, ‘That’s good, I’m going there too.’

When I said I hadn’t booked in to any place but was going down to take pot luck, everyone laughed. The blondie said, ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’

It was then I learned that unless you booked twelve months ahead your chances of attaining so much as a bed in a bath, a place on a billiard table, or even a roof over your head were practically nil. Newquay at this time of the year was not full but overflowing.

I said confidently, ‘I’ll fix that with a bit of cold canvass.’

It was a tough trip. We arrived at our destination at 8 am next morning. I said goodbye to my fellow-travellers and set off with a light heart.

Two hours later, dirty and dusty, shoes trodden grey, I wasn’t so optimistic. I had called on a hundred places and the unvarying answer to my unvarying query of ‘Have you a room?’ was, ‘We are booked up till October … November … next year.’ Well-meaning landladies sent me on wild goose chases with, ‘I haven’t a room, but Mrs So-and-So, now, she may have a room. I know her well, just mention my name.’

To add to my torments the sun, which had refused to shine while I was at camp, came out in molten glory. After three hours’ fruitless effort, I was willing to admit defeat when I came to a tiny house, unpretentious, spotlessly clean. There was no ‘Room to Let’ sign, nor any other misleading signs by which Newquay taunts the weary tourist. I staggered up the steps and knocked. A silvery-haired old dear opened the door. To my croak of ‘Have you a room?’, she gazed at me – rather warily I thought – then gave me the amazing reply, ‘I’ll have to see my sister.’ When the sister was produced she, too, subjected me to doubtful scrutiny, then asked, ‘Are you an Australian?’ I thought, ‘Maybe I remind her of Ned Kelly!’, and meekly gulped, ‘Yes.’

Thereupon they retired for consultation to reappear with the magic words, ‘We can let you have a room. Can you come back in half an hour?’

Mention of ‘coming back in half an hour’ rather dashed my hopes. I asked, ‘Can I leave my bag?’ When they graciously acquiesced, I went off, touching every bit of available wood for luck, wondering what the mysterious interval meant.

It wasn’t till I returned and settled in that I discovered one of the ladies had given up her own room to me and the half-hour was needed to remove clothes. They were two exceedingly charming and truly English ladies. One was a widow and the other had never married, but with complete unselfishness they established me in their little home.

Arrangements were that I pay for bed and breakfast and forage for myself for other meals. This I felt I was quite capable of doing until I found residents got no extra rations to feed the multitude and, with its population swollen to ten times its normal size, queues were the order of the day. The locals moaned that the visitors, spurred by necessity, arose early and bought all available stocks. The visitors retaliated that they were charged exorbitant prices for everything from accommodation upwards and had to put up with much rudeness from tradesmen.

At this particular juncture, food problems were for me a thing of the future. The magnet was the heady smell of the sea and the thought of a surf. Directed by my landladies I made a bee-line for the beach. From the top of towering headlands which must have been two hundred feet high, I looked down on the beach below. The water, with a borderline of white, was a good mile out. Everyone seemed to be completely disinterested in it. On closer inspection, after climbing down a couple of hundred stairs, most seemed to be reclining on deck chairs, all with their backs to the water.

One bright spot was that there was really some fine sand; the sun was shining so that all that was required was to get the water in close enough to swim in it. Enquiries regarding dressing sheds brought blank stares; the beach didn’t run to such conveniences, the procedure being you either wore your costume down under your clothes or wandered off into the innumerable caves and recesses that pitted the cliff base and disrobed there.

Lying on the sand with the warm sun on my back and appreciatively enjoying some really pretty holidaymakers, I found I could, with a dash of imagination, almost see myself back at Bondi or Manly; one big difference being the great patch of wet sand stretching out to the distant water. Watching this, I said to a fellow sunbaker, ‘How the hell do you get a swim here?’

He looked at me in surprise and said, ‘Ah, by gum, you wait till tide comes in, chum.’

‘Does it really go out that far?’

‘Farther,’ he replied, ‘it be on turn now. Water will soon be coming in.’

So it proved. In a matter of thirty minutes a small flood wave five inches high came rushing and rolling over the intervening sand. It was amazing to see the speed at which the tide flowed in. Within an hour, rocks that stood high and dry were under water and a real surf, breaking two hundred yards out, boomed and crashed into the caves and fissures in the cliff face.

Despite the fact that the water had, figuratively speaking, come almost up to their door, the sunbathers took no notice as they lounged in their canvas chairs, backs to the sea. A few children and adults paddled on the edge, but the rest ignored it.

I soon found one possible good reason for this strange behaviour when I wandered down to the edge of the tumbling surf. The water was freezingly cold. I had swum in Melbourne in winter but this water was colder than St Kilda baths in mid-August.

As the tide came in, it had engulfed the headlands so that the northern beach was a complete unit, probably four hundred yards long. The only solution I could find for a swim was to do a couple of vigorous laps on the beach and then go in by degrees. The water was so cold that I got wet by inches and could not get warm even on the swim out to the waves. The disconcerting part of this surf, besides the coldness of the water, was the eerie way the waves boomed into the caves in the headlands and cliffs. I cracked two waves and, despite my enthusiasm, had to give it away. Fifteen minutes was as long as I could stand.

Just after twelve the beach emptied as if by magic, in spite of the the brightly shining sun. This I put down to some strange English idiosyncrasy and stayed on while the sun and surf were good.

It was amazing the way the tide continued to come in; around about two when I decided on my last swim, there was only a strip of sand fifty yards wide. As I started my warm-up run I noticed that some of the chairs were, for the first time, turned towards the sea.

Even though the water was freezing I felt the old thrill of battling out through the turbulent water, felt the tug and drag of eddies as the waves crashed over me, the suck of the undertow as the big ones reared above, experienced again that exhilarating inward surge as I swam for a howler to come hurtling down the crest, the water sizzling from under my belly. It was living again. After a while the cold beat me and I came out with goose pimples on my goose pimples. A change had come over the weather. A cold breeze had blown up from the sea, the sun was obscured by cloud and I was chilled to the bone. A pretty femme said, ‘That was marvellous, do it again.’

Through chattering teeth I said, ‘Lady, I’m frozen to the bone. Wait till I get some breath and shake the icicles off and I’ll give it a go.’

The promised surf never came off because the sun disappeared for good. The cold wind increased and the worms started to bite.

Getting dressed was really a problem. The surf had engulfed the caves and rocks. I solved this by retiring to the end of the beach, wrapping a towel around me and wriggling out of my costume and into my pants.

Up in the shopping centre I found the reason for the midday exodus. All the restaurants were either closed or had signs up announcing they were sold out. In desperation I went into a neat little fish food bar. The proprietor was a pleasant-faced middle-aged fellow. He said he was sorry, but couldn’t serve any food until 6 pm. I felt a little salesmanship was required and explained my predicament – that I hadn’t eaten since early morning, wasn’t aware of the local eating rules, and was as hungry as a hunter.

He explained he had knocked back dozens and wasn’t game to serve me. I declared I didn’t care where I ate, in the kitchen, in the backyard, anywhere. Finally I prevailed on him to serve me a crab salad in the kitchen. During this surreptitious meal he explained there was only a limited amount of food available. The restaurants got no extra food and as most of the holidaymakers received only bed and breakfast and hung on to their ration cards, there just wasn’t enough food to go round. He added that a similar position applied in the pubs and, if you wanted a drink, you had to be quick as the local hostelries stayed open only as long as their rations lasted.

He was a nice fellow who had known the Australians in the First World War. Before I left he gave me a note to take to the secretary of the local workmen’s club, where he said I could get a comfortable drink should the necessity arise. However, he warned me they served a beer, significantly known as ‘dynamite’, which was not generally available in the pubs and, unlike the usual hogwash, really had a kick.

The transformation on the beaches was amazing. When I came out the tide was at the full, the central beach had gone, the ships in the little harbour were riding at anchor, protected from the waves that broke against its stout stone sides and rolled on to smash against the walls of the promenade. A sea mist had crept in, reducing visibility to a mile, and swimming for the day was over.

Strolling back to my lodging looking at the shops, I heard an excited voice calling, ‘Johnny, Johnny.’ It was the little blonde from the train and her dark cobber, the latter escorted by a sleek-looking civvie with a natty little moustache.

For my part, anyway, it was a fortunate meeting. The girls were racing back to their boarding house to be in the first sitting for supper. Food problems were just as acute on the boarding house front as for the freelance holidaymaker.

The blonde was tied up until 9 pm with a Canadian officer from a nearby station; this unlucky fellow had to be back in camp by 9.30 pm. I made arrangements to meet her in front of the local dancing Casino at 9.15. She gave my hand a squeeze and just that look from her baby blue eyes set my pulse racing. She was a cuddlesome little first-divisioner; the night promised its excitements.

I was in the first attacking wave at my lunchtime benefactor’s food bar. He suggested I meet him at the workman’s club at 7.30 and he would introduce me to the Secretary.

The six o’clock swill had nothing on the local pubs as the thirsty populace, its ranks swelled by thousands of visitors, struggled to get as much anaemic beer down their parched gullets as possible before the supply ran out. After struggling for half an hour to catch an elusive barmaid’s eye I made for the workman’s club. I had my benefactor’s note clutched in my little hot hand and had asked to see the secretary, when the man himself walked in.

In a matter of minutes I was an honorary member and being introduced to his friends. It was a very pleasant set-up with plenty of good company, convivial companions and strong liquor. I disregarded Bill’s warning and ordered pints. It was a pale draught and except for a stronger malty flavour, did not seem to differ appreciably from numerous other innocuous brews I had tasted all over England.

It was a complete surprise when the stewards started to warn us to drink up and get out. Then I found, to my horror, the time was 10.30. I also realised that I was very, very clucky, but the most horrible thought was I’d forgotten about my appointment. Clutching a very faint hope, I made for the Casino but there was no sign of the blonde.

Next morning my landladies, who had somehow managed to get me an egg, served me breakfast in bed. As the sun shone brightly I was on the beach early. There, later in the morning, I ran into my appointment of the previous evening. By her cool acknowledgment of my greeting I knew I had had it. Strangely enough, it’s the girls you miss that you remember most.

Far out was a line of white water. As the tide came racing in it was evident there was a big surf running. From somewhere out in the vastness of the Atlantic those swells had been born and now they broke three hundred yards out, big fifteen foot howlers.

I wasn’t game to go out to the big ones on my own, but ventured half-way in the hope that I would pick up a medium one. While I was there I got to thinking about the fin I had seen at the top of North of Scotland, as we were coming down the coast. It had looked uncommonly like a shark fin and even though I felt that any unlucky shark that ventured into the waters would assuredly die of pneumonia, the thought persisted.

While I was ruminating on this disturbing subject, three swimmers, two breast-stroking and one doing a powerful side stroke, went by making towards the big ones. I could hardly believe my eyes but smartly started after them. We were getting close to the first line when I spotted the crest of a whopper bearing in. At the sight of this wall of water the two breast-strokers turned for shore, stroking furiously; the side-stroker and I went forward. We both dived deep as its crest crashed and came up safely on the other side. Treading water, I told my companion he was the first swimmer I had met here who came out into the surf. He said he was stationed at the local heavy artillery garrison and had twice tried to swim The Channel. He stated his training for this arduous task was to swim five or six miles along the coast every day.

I asked him if he had ever seen any sharks. This was something he’d never apparently thought of and after a surprised pause, he said, ‘No. I’ve never worried about them’, and asked me what made me enquire. I stated I came from Australia where the sharks were always on our minds and also said I considered I had seen a shark’s fin at the entrance to the Irish Sea as we were coming down The Channel.

As we were talking I saw a suitable wave forming. I was right on the spot and only had to turn and glide on to it. I rode it to within fifty yards of the shore and then dropped off as I was anxious to get back while I still had company. Halfway out, I met my companion swimming furiously towards shore. When he sighted me he stopped in amazement and demanded where the bloody hell I’d got to.

He was ashen-faced and stated we had been talking about sharks one moment and the next moment I had completely disappeared. He immediately decided I’d been grabbed by one and was making with all speed to the safety of the shore. His morale was so badly shaken I couldn’t kid him into coming out again. I have often wondered if I spoiled the peace of mind of this marathon swimmer during his long jaunts along the coast, as he remembered the bleedin’ Orstralian who had so unaccountably disappeared, and also the disturbing thought that perhaps sharks could survive in this supposedly warm Gulf Stream.

At the time, the thought of the fellow’s consternation tickled my odd sense of humour so I ventured out, cracked another howler, and rode it on to the beach. Here I found this evidence of surf prowess really had the natives intrigued. As far as I could learn this was the first time anyone had seen a man ride a wave. To me it seemed amazing; that surf must have been rolling on to this beach for centuries and yet no one in the town, either local or visitor, had mastered the art of surf-riding.1

As the blonde was draped around some attentive swain and took some pains to let me see her, I was on the outer and palled up with a couple of femmes who wanted to know how I had learned this new art. They were both nice kids and we were later joined by a Scottish corporal. He proved a mighty interesting guy, was a member of the famous Black Watch and had been in the Middle East since 1938. The usual period was 2 years but with the outbreak of war they had been kept there. He had fought through all the Eighth Army battles, had been in Tobruk, had taken part in the famous Black Watch attack that had wiped out eighty per cent of their strength at El Alamein. On his return he had found his wife living with another man with three additional children added to his two. He had taken his wife’s transgressions philosophically, stating he was bloody lucky to be alive.

I have always considered the Scotch and Australians to have a closer accord than with the English, Irish or Welsh. This probably stems from the kindred interests in fighting, wenching and drinking, plus their mutual dislike in the military sphere for bull of any kind. From the first day of our acquaintance his tough military training kept cropping up, and every now and then he would involuntarily call me ‘Sir’. This would send the two girls into convulsions.

That night, I treated the dynamite with caution and met Scotty and the girls as per arrangement, and a pleasant and interesting time was had by all.

Those days on the beach at Newquay were some of the happiest I spent in England. On the last day on the beach the Mayor came down. He had half a dozen schoolboys with him. He introduced himself and explained that he had high hopes when the war was over of advertising the surfing attractions of Newquay. Would I be kind enough before I left to teach these young hopefuls the art of surf riding, so that they in turn could pass it on.

I tried to explain it took a number of years for me to become a competent surfer. I had started surfing at six and considered I was not a good surf swimmer and surfer till I was thirteen or fourteen.

I agreed, however, to take them out as they were selected swimmers. The only drawback here was all except one were breast or side-stroke swimmers. The exception was a solidly-built youth of about sixteen, who really showed some aptitude. He was the only one who could get through the breakers and doggedly followed me in attempts to climb on to waves, went down the mine, but came up for more. I hope with the few hints I gave him this young fellow in time became a competent surfer. When I finally left Newquay I was tanned and fitter than I had been for years.2