A Part Truth

It's Easter weekend and my heart is full. For the last five days, I've been indulging in morning swims, naked, in a secret rockpool on Victoria's south-west. The beautiful moon has been setting over the red cliffs and into the forest, and the sun has been melting upwards into the big blue. They've been burning off in the Otways (controlled burns are a way of managing the fire season here) and the smoke haze has been causing some gorgeous light shows that change every day according to the amount of smoke in the air.

As there's no surf, I beeline for the Mermaid pool for a naked swim (more on this later, where you'll see a photo of me in the water naked).

The Mermaid pool is a huge natural rock pool, as big as a small swimming pool and as deep, and as the water temperature has been a lovely 18 degrees celsius, it's just been lovely to swim in. Diving into the cool water is refreshing and my skin comes alive. I can easily separate my physical reaction (tingling skin, the pain receptors alert, the brain's reaction to the cold as danger) from my psychological reaction (oh fuck it's cold, get me out of here) and swim for about twenty minutes, watching the sun rise.

I return home refreshed, grateful I live in such a beautiful part of the world. I'm salt encrusted and feel alive. On the first two mornings I'm alone, for the others, I bring my husband, and later my son, who's visiting for Easter. It's awesome to have a little adventure together as a family.

The Whole Truth

The above is all true - for a blessed few moments just before first light, and as the day lightens, I get the world to myself. I have perhaps half an hour of this luxury before the crowds start waking up and coming to the beach. The stunning Mermaid Pool begins to be visited by people 'in the know' - locals like myself who get there early to enjoy the magic and the quiet. I see them coming about a kilometer up the beach, so I have chance to get out and get dressed before they arrive. On one morning they beat me there and I have to dive in with my bra and knickers on instead. I don't mind - they are locals. But in an another half hour, it'll be full of kids and dogs. I'm glad that the tide sweeps through the pool each high tide to flush it out.

By the time I head up to the carpark, there's twenty surfers out in the water - far too many for the tiny waves that come through. Five to ten take off on each wave at once - surfing etiquette goes out the window. It's extraodinary that there are still people paddling out despite the crowds. It would not suprise me if there were fights and injuries. As much as I adore surfing, I won't surf at Easter - it's utter chaos.

Headed back up to the beach, the van lifers have stirred, and they are pulling out chairs and kettles and making breakfast. One guy runs stark naked down to the water, clearly proud of his physique. I'm pretty sure he's the same guy we caught shagging in the back of his Troopy the day before. We'd literally walked up the sandy track where the back of his car was open, and there he is, pumping away at his missus with the curtain wide open and his hairy arse out for all to see. I'm no prude but this was going way too far. No one needs to see that at 8 am.

It's the kind of thing that warrants headlines like this:

Byron Bay, that hippie surfing mecca that once was a quiet town, is struggling. With noone going overseas, this happens:

Byron's visitor numbers eclipsing its permanent population, the local community has found itself at a crossroads, struggling to reconcile this "free-living" ethos with the inexorable costs of tourism. And as "van lifers" increasingly seep into the suburbs, it is ordinary residents who have suddenly found themselves bearing the brunt of tourism's ugly side: motorhomes lining residential streets, human waste on front lawns, and authorities trying in vain to keep it under control. - from ABC.com.au here

Now one thing you should know about me is that I have well and truly lived #vanlife way before it was a thing. I travelled around Australia in a '76 Toyota Corolla, and I've lived in an old Bedford mobile library and a Bedford horse lorry in the UK, owned any number of vans (currently still do) and we're doing up a 2001 Defender as a travel vehicle. So I'm not against van life as such - but what I am against is their inability to see how their lifestyle impacts others. You can argue it's not all of them, and it's not 'you', sure, but bottom line is there are a lot - a LOT - of twats in vans spoiling it for the rest of you. And if you're guilty of shagging your missus in a public space for all of us to see, or shitting on someone's lawn, or leaving rubbish behind, then may your van break down to the point of unfixability.

And here's the pile of rubbish one left behind. It's not just there - it's all over the coast. Pizza boxes and beer cans. Paper plates and knickers. Ew. Now, I'm not saying that's all vanlifers per se - don't go getting offended, but still. Sheesh. What kind of human being are you? Why on earth would you come to such a wild and beautiful place and be such an asshole?

Earlier I hinted that you might see a photo of me swimming naked at sunrise. here it is. Not a full lie. You didn't think I'd really reveal all, did you?

With Love,

https://gateway.ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcGSZxvsXD8YbSCNAo6KWc4a9RjXyRCjWupZdPXJapkXk

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