A Letter To The Moment I Knew It Was Time To Go Home 

There were so many things I could have chosen to write about here. Sitting in a bogan car at the drive in, in a tiny town in the far north west of Australia with a boy I did not likeFinding my 15 year old self dressed a LOT like Madonna at the Street Machine Summer NatsStanding triumphant in the front row at that 1986 festival only to be told by

the girl next to me that the boys in the band were looking down my top. I decided to go for something with fewer boobs, less hair and fewer cars. My letter is about my brother and me. 

Dear Moment,It has been quite some time since we were together. You came with a Famous Five mindset, long crisp days and the promise of cheese on toast and a cosy couch once you’d passed. So great. Not that life isn't full of those things now. My couch is cosy, my toast is cheesy and my days are often crispy, but I am slightly more grown up, I guess. Here is the lead up to where YOU came in, back then, when I was ten. 

We sat in the lounge room on well worn club chairs. We looked at the fire, cosy crackling. We looked at the grey floral carpet dotted with little burns and singe marks. We looked at the cricket flickering, green and soundless on the telly. We looked at the dead flies, legs crossed on the window sill. We looked at the quiet, still day, at the

glassy water and at the boats sliding slowly back and forth in our little bay below. We looked at the stack of faded comics at our feet. We looked at each other. 

Do you want to go fishing? I said Sure. He said. 

We pulled our jumpers over bed hair and wriggled our feet into our sneakers. We walked to the room at the back of the shack and rummaged in the cupboard for a bucket. I grabbed two rods from outside the bathroom door as he stuffed a packet of biscuits and a bottle of ginger beer into his backpack. He fished around in the old chest freezer for bait while I looked for Minties and scribbled a note to the adults. They seemed to be missing. Maybe they had done the big drive into town to get bread and milk. 

I yanked opened the back door and fly strips slapped our faces. We squinted as we pushed our way out into the bright white daylight, slamming the door behind us. We strode across the back patio of our Blue Shack, past the little piles of shells, sea urchins, pieces of drift wood. Past the

clothesline, flapping beach towels and someone’s bathers. Past the old barbecue where the shack key was hidden beneath a secret brick. 

We walked past the woodpile, short-cutting across the grass and under the house for some extra hooks and sinkers. It was dark down there. It smelled like metal and petrol. I pulled my jumper up over my mouth and tried to shallow breathe as we sorted through old jars full of lures and weights and hooks. The rust coated bits and pieces made me shiver. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. 

Outside again, we breathed the sea air deeply. We walked across the crunchy grass and through the front gates. We were on the unsealed road now, still crunching along beneath the huge cliff top gums. Below were the rocks and the beach further along. It seemed a long way down and you could see all the way to Bruny Island from here. 

We walked along the road, a single row of houses on each side bordered by paddocks to the left and the cliff and sea to the right. There were

only about 15 little houses, their gardens dotted with the same hardy red hot pokers, agapanthus and geraniums. Some shacks were deserted, their front yards sporting long grass and littered with shards of bark or broken branches from the overhanging trees. Others were neat as a pin with elderly residents tucked quietly inside, tidy cars in the driveways and smoke trailing from their chimneys. 

At the end of the road, past all the shacks, neat and not, was an old wooden fence. We hoisted ourselves over it and walked along the grass towards the cliff edge. It felt scary and exciting. It felt HIGH. The best climbing spot was marked by a towering gum which jutted from the cliff top. The ground was bare there, exposed to the elements and our constant clambering. I went first. 

I kneeled in the dirt and scuttled backwards away from the big tree, clinging to its roots as I shimmied carefully toward the rocks and blue sea below. I had my arm looped through the bucket handle and it bumped noisily as I climbed,

pretending to be fearless and feeling like a Charlie’s Angel (with a bucket.) 

A minute or two of bumping and bravery and I landed safely on the rocks. He reached the same spot at the bottom of the cliff about a minute after I did and we unloaded our things onto the ground. We were right by the water’s edge. It was calm. It was sunny, but not hot. The breeze was slight, a sea sigh, I suppose. 

He baited up our hooks, first slicing the bait bag open with his pocket knife, then skewering the half frozen nuggets of yuck with difficulty. I held my nose as I put the rest of the bait in the sun to defrost. We washed our hands in the rock pools and chose our fishing spots. We were going to catch a fish, maybe a few fish even, enough for all the kids to have fish and chips for dinner. That was the plan. 

So there we sat. By the sea. Waiting. I think we sat for 256 hours. Well. Probably we sat for a good 4 minutes with not a bite. I reeled my line in and looked at the bait. Surely there was something wrong with it. I

cast my line again. I waited. For 143 hours. Or 3 minutes. Still no dice. He had no bites either. We waited. We watched. We listened to the seagulls. We saw boats putt by. We yawned. Nothing. I can’t tell you how boring it was. This was not part of the plan. 

I wedged my rod into a hole in the rocks, the line still trailing in the water and wandered about a bit. I picked up some shells, looked at starfish and sea urchins. Ate a biscuit. Stubbed my toe. Sobbed. Ate a Mintie. Pretended to be a mermaid. Glugged some ginger beer. Wandered some more. Looked at my sore toe. Talked to myself a little bit. Pretended to be Marie from Swiss Family Robinson. Checked my line. Nothing. He pulled his line in too and perched himself on a rock eating mildly fishy biscuits. It was not fun. I wished we were back with the comics and the singed carpet watching Welcome Back Kotter. 

We decided to freshen up the hooks with new bait. Um. There was no bait. The seagulls had stolen it, staging un-noticed air raids

while we were eating biscuits. Bugger it. We had not caught a single fish. Our bucket was empty, our biscuits were all gone, we only had 5 Minties and the soupy bit of the ginger beer left. Things were dire. We were desperate and baitless. 

I was mad now, Moment. I would not be beaten by seagulls. Hungry cousins were relying on me. If we didn’t catch any fish it would be spaghetti bolognaise for the third night running. I took the empty bucket and began pulling periwinkles off the rocks. (I know it’s brutal, but these were tough times and we were running out of rations with nothing to show for it.) I scooped the inside of a periwinkle with the pocket knife. It was rubbery and weird. I pushed my hook through it, wincing and gagging a bit (as you do with things that are rubbery and weird). I don’t know how I knew to do this, but I did. 

I carried my rod to the water and sat at the water’s edge with my legs tucked under me. I plonked my line in so the hook floated a little way under the

surface. All was quiet. The water was so still and shallow, I could clearly see the baited hook moving with the current and the seaweed swirling beneath it. Then I saw a fish. A flash of silver as a flathead swam up and bit the hook. I got such a shock I yanked the rod over my ten year old shoulder and the now-hooked fish flew up onto the rocks with a thud. I stood with my mouth open. He shrieked with laughter and wide-eyed, grabbed the fish. I turned away as he gave it a quick whack, and put it in the bucket, clattering the periwinkles on to the rocks to make room. We stared at each other, and then at the fish. We were awestruck. 

We tried it again, lowering our periwinkled hooks, waiting til we saw a fish swim up just seconds later and yanking our short lines out of the water without even having to reel them in. The fish were flying onto the rocks with stunned regularity. 

We caught eight fish, enough to feed two shackfulls. We puffed our chests up proudly. We were Periwinkle Pirates, swaggering in soggy rolled up jeans, Goodies

songs our sea shanties, chewing Minties like tobacco. He was so swashbuckly he drank the last soupy bit of the ginger beer. Yuck. I screwed up my nose and dug in my pocket for another lolly. I dug deep, retrieving three empty wrappers and a hair clip. I dug in my other pocket, then, and even more hopefully, in each back pocket. Nothing. No dice. 

I looked at my stubbed toe. I looked at my soggy rolled up jeans. I looked at my mermaid legs and at the sea before me. I looked at the empty periwinkle shells and at the bucket full of shiny fish. We looked at each other. 

Sean, the Minties are all gone, I said. He shrugged. That was the moment I knew it was time to go home.