It was Friday 20th March 2020.
I had been working from home for over a month. After tuning into the news hourly for weeks only to hear of bad news and the rising death toll, I felt an urge to escape.
I longed to breathe in the fresh air blowing off the surface of the Tasman Sea. I longed to walk on the cool wet sand and let the ocean waves slowly roll over my feet. I longed to be in my happy place.
I got into my car and as I drove along, I couldn’t help but notice the eerie silence in the streets as I made my way from the west of Sydney to the northern beaches.
It was an unusually warm autumn evening and when I arrived at the beach at around 5:30pm, I couldn’t help but feel the emptiness. I parked my car at the top of the cliff and made my way down the steep uneven stairway. Turimetta, named after a local aboriginal clan, was a beautiful 350m stretch of sandy beach bordered by two headlands. It was always a quiet place, probably because the ocean rips that form in the water at this unpatrolled beach make swimming here too dangerous. I didn’t mind at all. To me, this place was paradise, a hidden gem in the big city of Sydney. And this time, I had it all to myself.
When I arrived on the beach, I realised that there had been no one on there for some time; there were no footprints in the sand. Not a single soul in site.
It had been three months since first reports of a “cluster of pneumonia cases” in the city of Wuhan in the Hubei province of China.
It had been two months since the first reported case of COVID-19 in Australia. It had been carried into the country by an infected man travelling from Wuhan to Victoria.
It had been only nine days since the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.
It was the very day that the Australian government announced that it was closing the borders to non-Australian residents and that two-weeks of quarantine in supervised hotels was now mandatory for all residents returning from overseas.
In hindsight, it was not very long into the pandemic at all. But already the fear and shock of this disease and its devastating consequences were felt far and wide.
This was, at least for me, the beginning of the end of life as we knew it, life before COVID-19.
I walked along the beach for some time, just me and my thoughts. Eventually I stopped at the south end to admire these large boulders that had somehow been swept up by the ocean and dropped here on the rock platform that was covered in a rich green moss.
After admiring the boulders and their position on the platform for several moments, I noticed that one of them had some mysterious rock carvings. I couldn’t make out all the carvings in the late afternoon light, but I could see the face of a bearded man, three birds each with their wings spread, a large lizard, a paw print and the initials (my initials) RB.
The other boulder had this lovely honeycomb pattern across it, which I imagine had formed over time from years of erosion from the ocean’s relentless motion.
I stood for a long while just admiring the carvings and my surroundings. Sea gulls flew by, some landed on the rocks and basked in what remained of the day light before continuing on their way.
Then I noticed this figure that seemingly walked out from nowhere, strolling down the steep path onto the beach. As the figure got closer, I could just make out the face of a young man with light brown hair. He was wearing a white t-shirt and white shorts and had no footwear, not on his feet or in his hands. I remember thinking he must have lived nearby and that he too felt an urge to escape.
The young man seemed so deep in thought that I don’t think he even saw me. He appeared to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Within a few seconds, he had walked out onto the mossy rock platform. The water rippled and swirled around his feet as he carefully made his way across the slippery surface. He walked past the big boulders and continued making his wat past the small rock pools that had formed as the tide was coming in, until he could go no further without plunging into the ocean.
The young man stood in solitude for a long while, looking out across the ocean as the sun dropped lower and lower behind the horizon and the sky began to darken.
I imagined that he too was contemplating this new life that we had been plunged into, what the sudden changes meant, and which loved one he might lose on the coming months.
Eventually, the stars slowly appeared in the sky, the sea gulls stopped flying overhead, and the tide continued to rise, bringing the water level to his knees. The young man turned around and carefully made his way back across the platform, onto the sand and up the steep pathway, until he was out of sight.
I too turned and made my way across the beach and back up the path. I drove home, first in deep contemplation of the afternoon, the sand with no footprints, the swirl of the water, the carvings in the rocks, the colonies of seagulls flying across the sky in unison, the colours in the sky that deepened as the sun dropped lower and lower behind the horizon, and the young man who carried the world on his shoulders. And then the eerie silence of the streets as I drove drew my attention back to the reality of life, the pandemic and how much everything was about to change, forever.
By Rose Boutros
Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed the read or if you see a picture in my gallery that you would like to read about in my next blog post!
Comments