Of Micro-adventures

Wake up. You are lying in your bed. Your bed is a white Holden Commodore that you share with an almost two meter tall man. It is still dark. You hear sounds from outside the tinny walls that are your home. Chatter and laughter, car doors being shut, zippers being zipped. A peek out the window reveals: surfers!
You are on a parking lot in Mornington Peninsula, overlooking a wild beach. Realise you can't sleep any longer. Wait until they are down at the beach. Get out of your car. Check your watch; it is only 5 AM. You are not a morning person. But you don't care.
Pull out your camping chairs, wrap your duvets around you. Cereals clank and clonk into your camping gear bowls and milk sploshes over them. Cold morning air strokes your face. Taste the salt on your lips, the wet breeze coming towards you from the sea. The air is sugared with anticipation. Will I catch a good wave? Wonder what you will catch.
Take in everything that is in front of you. The ocean, raging and wild. The beautiful red sand of the beach. It is that time of the day when the morning sun bathes the world into this magical light of promise.
Munch your cereal and watch the surfers. See their bodies gliding into the dark, rippling waves; coming up again, their skin shiny like a seal's. It is a treacherous beach for there are sharp rocks hidden beneath the surface. But the surfers seem skilled and enjoy the adventure.
Think about the special smell of morning air.
Years later, you will be asked to write about a day you will never forget. Start making a list in your head of all the great things you did. Like climbing the Sidney Harbour Bridge – twice - , driving through the Outback, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, climbing Uluru. But time and again, you will come back to this memory. It is tattooed onto your eyelids - so that you will never forget.
Sitting on this wild beach on a cold, breezy morning in Australia, watching the world wake up. You still aren't a morning person, but for nothing in the world would you want to have slept in that morning!