May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks. J. R. R. Tolkein. The Hobbit.
Tolkein’s classic book, The Hobbit, must be the ultimate story of adventuring from your front door. Unsuspecting hobbit meets reknowned wizard and embarks on a dangerous and daring quest to save the world from destruction. I must have read the book four or five times as a child and just thinking about Tolkien’s wonderful prose and poems makes me want to dip back into its magical pages again.
Grown-ups, however, can also have adventures from home. Those adventures may not be as audacious and daring as Bilbo Baggins’ adventures but that does not decrease their legitamcy. Having an adventure from home requires turning your head a little onto one side and viewing the world around you in a slightly different way. Perhaps you could catch the bus to a random stop a dozen kilometres away and trace a line across the map finding your way home, or, you could paddle north or south and land on a tiny beach accessible only at low tide, or thread your way through rock islets and find new caves. No matter where you live, an adventure is right outside your front door.
One of the local adventures I had been planning for some time had been to paddle north from our local bay to Durras where we would cross the sometimes open, sometimes closed bar at the terminus of Durras Lake, and meander up the lake to a wooded campsite far from anyone. The last time we paddled into Durras Lake from home was November 2020, so I had probably had this little adventure from home on the agenda ever since!
There was little swell or chop heading north and we both began to think the bar/surf entry would be easy. And, indeed it was, even with an outrunning current. In fact, the toughest part of the trip was paddling up the narrow arm of the creek to reach the main Durras Lake as the water was so shallow it was hard to take a proper paddle stroke. After a lunch break, we paddled up one arm of the lake and found a nice campsite shaded by she-oaks and big spotted gums. Of course, the entire lake needed to be paddled, this was an adventure after all, so after the all important (for me at least) tea break, we launched the kayaks again and paddled up to the northern end of the lake. Fish were constantly jumping, large rays swam by under the boat, and near the northwestern end of the lake, a large bevy of black swans rested.
That night, I followed an old forestry track through the woods and was surprised to hear the constant sussuration of the surf on the beach. How could such a small swell sound so loud? When I got back to our camp site and we checked the wave buoy data, that distant murmur made a lot of sense. Inexplicably, the wave height had popped up to three metres maximum with a 12 second period. Conditions like that would make exiting the bar next day interesting.
Sea kayaking, as someone once said, is the new mountaineering. On long ski traverses, when storms moved in, we would lay confined to tents listening to the wind blow occasionally crawling out into the tempest to dig out the tents. All night (or day if we were confined by weather) we would listen to the wind and snow and worry about avalanche conditions. On sea kayak trips, it is the sound of the surf booming on the beach that causes worry. Will we get off next day? The parallel is not quite the same as surf on a beach can sound very loud on a quiet night even when that surf is small. That knowledge, however, seldom stops the brain worrying.
The night, however, was far from quiet. As usual in the Australian bush, the forest was alive with creatures, bats, birds, marsupials, macropods; eery cries, grunts and squawks puncuated the night until the early morning hours when there was a semi-silent hour before the dawn birds began their song. So many other living creatures of which we are largely unaware.
Next morning, we discovered our breakfast (cooked eggs) smelt disgusting and had clearly gone off, so we made do with black coffee out of our large plastic jugs. Paddling back down the lake was easy and, as we neared the boat ramp, we picked up the outgoing current (maybe the lake is just constantly running out) and slipped easily down to the bar. I got out of my boat and had a look, but Doug was content with looking from the water. A bit messier than the day before, but an easy exit again riding the current out past the reef; paddling south under a beating sun, stopping at Judges Beach for a swim and tea, and finally, in a blustery summer northeasterly wind catching waves back home to our local bay and the end of another backyard adventure.
All photos (bar one) DB.
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