I can still close my eyes and remember summer holidays as a kid.
The impossibly long car trip we made each year to the small beach town on the other side of the looming, jungle-like mountain ranges.
Behind us, our side. A flat, dry, dusty stretch and nothing more.
Giant eucalyptus dense mountains. Air thick with anticipation and humidity. Sticky pressed limbs against my sisters offering no room to breathe, as Dad played the same Abba tape over and over again trying to drown us all out.
Bellbird calls echoing into the deep dark green, making it all feel like I was in a storybook.
Magic.
I can still remember how the wind felt as it slapped my face and made my hair tumble and dance, as I gleefully flung my 10-year-old head out the window. Unable to contain my excitement that soon I would be on the lookout for the ocean, in between the trees that blurred around us.
Dying to be the first one to spot the water between gaps in the trees.
Finally entering the sun-sparkled beach town, it felt like a different planet.
It all suddenly slowed down. No more blur or wind whipping at my face. I spied weary caravans and boats on second-hand lots, reflecting the sun's glare making me squint on our way into town. Broken motel signs promising vacancy behind stark white and blue cement rendered walls.
Hot sweaty limbs and fights over Minties suddenly forgotten.
All of it was a hazy, heated mosaic laid out before us to explore. Our Voyager, the faded yellow Fiat.
Cars, topped with surfboards parked along the forest's edge, an assurance of waves just beyond.
Then it hits. The cicada's and their seaside pulse, deafening as a backing track to it all as we burst out of the car while our thongs melted to our feet like the tar beneath them. Racing to reach the small opening in the brush leading to a narrow sandy track, towels and bags and parents following us.
The sprint across the scorching sand as Dad surveyed the perfect spot before striped beach umbrellas are driven into soft sand.
Hours upon hours were spent in those salty, sandy waves. All of it crashed me around, like a lone sock in a washing machine. Sea lice biting at my skin until I was forced back in by parent's calling from the shoreline, "5 more minutes!".
Dusk inevitably slipped down unnoticed as we busily swam out past the sand bar, explored rock pools and screamed ‘howzat’ at the top of our lungs during serious cricket games. Jumpers were then thrown over our swimmers, and the race was on to find the biggest walking stick on the beach as we marched the wet sand popping stranded inky Blue-Bottle's bellies with our heels, squealing with delight.
All arguments with my teenage sisters pretty much stopped in summer. We established an excitable treaty. Ensuring a united front on important issues like later bedtimes, daily ice creams and hours spent in the waves without interruption.
All stresses and worries loading down my parents stopped too.
They would smile at each other more on our holidays, and hold hands and kiss, as we marched proudly behind them, down palm tree-lined streets under stars. Our happy bellies full of fish and chips.
I still stand in the fruit market today and think back to the giant watermelons Dad would chop up every afternoon, as we slurped on a slice as big as our heads, sitting on back steps in our sand-logged swimmers. The brightest, deepest pink with the blackest of seeds.
We learnt about trailblazing with our cousins through the forests; slashing our way like proper explorers, making new trails for us to use as a shortcut to the beach closest to the house we stayed in.
It was a moment in time, gone so fast.
It seemed like forever to me until the next summer rolled around and we made our way across those green jungle mountains again.
I thought the anticipation would kill me.
At the end of my summer, I had nothing to show for it but the peeling, bubbled brown skin across my shoulder tops.
It is why I decided to at least collect some shells along the shoreline each summer.
The only way I could manage to capture a piece of the magic in my pocket, to take it back with me when things felt flat and dusty again.
I would give anything to be that kid again with my head out the window squealing in delight for what was coming up around the bend. Arms stretched out wide for all I had ahead of me in life, which to me at that age - was everything.
To just let go and dive in the waves for hours and laugh and only come in when the sea lice have bitten my skin raw.
To always collect a shell to take back to the mundane and hard and messy.
A little piece of heaven in my pocket.