Not all information contained therein necessarily
accurate…
There was a time when man used paper products to convey
information, as archaic as that sounds now.
In a surf traveler’s stash of essentials, an ugly orange,
perfunctorily font typefaced “guide” was in everyone’s
backpack.
It was called The Surf Report and it took traveling
somewhere to realize how much bullshit it contained, but
information was not accessible and at least it gave us some info to
explore beyond.
Personally scribbled, the added texts beyond the margins of the
original report were gold.
We guarded these “secrets” like they were actually
secret. Technically, they were our secrets.
It was on a trip to an unfamiliar stretch of New South Wales
coastline that I remember scanning the dog-eared copy yet again for
that region.
I had driven past or through this stretch a dozen times without
even stopping for petrol. We considered Newie a “drive through
town” which we now use to condescend the mid-west US as we fly
over.
The drive from Coffs (I used to love that left off the headland
just north of town) to Sydney was not urgent, our flight did not
leave for another two days. Redhead Beach was the call, we saw
a glimmer of waves before dusk, the wind was good and the nearby
cabins were cheap as dirt.
We had two boxes of beers to dust and one joint left from the
Hippy girl at Nimbin who got me fucked up on mushy tea a few weeks
earlier.
My bro handled the booking while I scoured The Surf
Report for info on the area.
We were given the key to our abode and my smiling friend cracked
the first beer as he sarcastically asked if I had learned
anything?
We made fun of each other, laughed and got wasted and the normal
protocol of deciding who got the lone bed was decided in his
favor.
I pulled out the tattered Report and began a thorough reading
for items I missed during my last thorough reading.
One defining section of the Report was “Hazards”.
Sure, pretty obvious. Sharks, sharp rocks, blah blah blah, but
the shit that always freaked me out was the small critters.
Snakes specifically and in this issue, Spiders.
The list of Spiders of concern was lengthy. The weed had had its
effect and I began to obsess over the brown funnel web spider
description.
Suddenly, I dropped the flashlight that I was reading by and
picked it up light first shining the battery powered illumination
onto the ceiling briefly, then again and again.
The ceiling of this fucking rental was almost completely covered
in Spider webs.
My buddy is soundly passed out and now I’m off the floor and
setting up my sleeping bag on the kitchen table. Which seemed a
good plan, yet closer to the intricately spun hunting ground above
my head.
You’ve know the phrase, sleeping with one eye open?
I think it was more romanticized in its historic sense. Clint
Eastwood taking a nap while the local inbreds surrounded him for a
gunfight he would win anyway.
Not this time, just a mid-twenties surfer freaking out over
deadly spiders in cave of spiders.
“What the fuck is wrong Hip, you didn’t get any sleep?”
I was outside well before light and he had awoken to
piss. I was still clutching that fucking Orange report in my
hand, too scared to let it go although I had the thing
memorized.
“We’re sleeping in a spider’s den… well, you were sleeping.”
He looked up to the spot that I pointed to.
“Holy fuck, that is a curtain of webs.”
He grabbed the report and read the warnings. His eyes opened as
he scanned his bed and the proximity to the A-frame ceiling close
to the wall next to the bed.
Surf looked very fun and I quickly forgot the long night.
North-ish direction of the swell was sweeping lefts south and there
were cross current rights on offer too.
I made a mental note to revise The Surf Report to
exclude another stay at the cabin and to note the good
beachbreak.
We were laughing about our good fortune as the fisherman parked
around us groused about a poor morning’s luck finding lunch.
You know that feeling, being so happy when others are fucking
angry.
Like Malibu ’83 when I’m skipping back to Topanga and my parked
car while huge surf and mudslides ruined people’s homes.
Or surfing through fires while all the residents evacuate and
it’s pumping.
I remember a hurricane forcing mass evacuations and the San Jose
River mouth dialing as good as it gets. Man, that was a good day,
long before the new harbor ruined the iconic break.
Three-hundred yard tubes. Chicken-skin pinch-worthy.
Anyway, on this day, the fishermen were the grumpy locals and we
were the elated tourists.
I got into the car, both side windows were rolled down all night
and I turned on the ignition to defrost the front window screen as
it was time to say au revoir to the disgruntled oldies
packing away their tackle boxes.
As the Holden sputtered to life, directly in front of my window
emerged an enormous spider caught under the screen and flushed by
the defrost cycle.
The massive Spider crawled right toward my driver side window
with a speed and agility I had never experienced.
My buddy roared and I climbed over him to “escape” out the
passenger side.
Full-scale panic.
The car lurched to a stop as I let go of the clutch.
The Fisho’s had the laugh of their lives as the mood tables had
turned.
One grabbed a broken branch and invited the spider to the nearby
brush as we caught our breath. We had barely escaped death it
seemed.
“Mate, what are you guys so scared of?”
I handed The Surf Report to him, opened to the small
paragraph on the brown recluse.
He read the passage to his crew and they all fell about
laughing.
Apparently, the brown recluse was not the spider “attacking” me
and was diminutive of size and rarely seen round those parts
according to the oldies.
We tried to look cool pulling away, but the boys waved to us
with more jeer than cheer.
We arrived in Narrabeen and got a proper room that night.
That peak was going off, but crowded as fuck with a very capable
crew owning it. We surfed the beach park as I had on trips before
and it was so much fucking fun.
Somewhere, in a box of discarded school papers and report cards
in my Mom’s attic laid a plethora of Surf Reports, each
customized in my own hand writing.
When she died, I never thought to look for the collection.
