Back in the heady days of 2012, my partner and I were newly in love. We had recently returned from a month in Thailand, life was a beach and when we got back we couldn’t believe the horrifying pace of city life. “Forget this,” we thought. “We’re beach people.”
Our budget meant we couldn’t quite afford to live near the ocean – at least not anywhere we liked. But a broader search uncovered a hidden jewel: a mystical inlet with a home that boasted its own private beach. Although we’d never heard of it, this pocket of paradise was close to family, half an hour from both our home towns.
We drove there with stars in our eyes, and after a picturesque walk to the end of the pier, put an offer on a two-bedroom place. We didn’t need to look inside. It had a gumtree that captured our hearts. Everything was rose-tinted and seemed fated in our favour.
The morning after moving day we had a hearty breakfast and headed out for a walk in our new neighbourhood.
One of the two friends who’d come to help us settle in joined us. The other had already been for a run that morning. We bid her adieu and smugly set off.
Although it wasn’t strictly our private beach, we didn’t see another person. It was great to stretch our legs and shake off the stiffness and stress of moving day.
We came across a sweet little rowboat up on the sand. I think it was at this point I asked, casually, if we should turn back. After all, our mates had commitments back in town and a long drive to get there on time.
But our friend wanted to see the pier and suggested we keep going. I’ll always look back on that moment and remember the choice we made. The choice that turned us into bog people.
Before long, the sand became a smidge muddy. What an adventure! I’ve never seen a beach like this before, we said to each other.
It was then that I started to get that sinking feeling. You know the one, where you realise you’re actually sinking. Knee-deep in farting mud, flashing back to Artax the horse’s traumatic death in The NeverEnding Story.
Being the most abundantly sized in the group, I sank the fastest. I needed some assistance from my lighter contemporaries. We could not stop laughing. Perhaps from hysteria. Or could it be the way my thighs had almost disappeared?
Quicksand had never felt real as a concept until this moment. As my partner and my friend yanked hard under my arms, I managed to wriggle one leg free. I gripped on to the mangroves for leverage.
When I eventually freed myself, we were all sweaty and muddy, still in fits of strange laughter. We realised we’d gone too far. We were surrounded by mud, but it only seemed like 20 metres or so to the next sandbank.
At this point, we also realised our private beach wasn’t so private. Various neighbours were dotted along the inlet, sitting on deckchairs, laughing and pointing at us as we crawled on our hands and knees (it was the only way not to sink down again). Was this some form of hazing? Were we doomed to be bog people for the term of our natural lives?
There was nothing for it but to swim across the inlet, fully clothed. I headed out first carrying one of our dogs, Happy Jesus, who was too freaked out by the whole thing to manage it alone. I held my phone above my head to call our other friend for rescue.
Our other dog, Clem, did several laps back and forth. It was his best day ever.
Eventually I got through to our friend and suggested she bring tarps for us to sit on so her car didn’t transform into the bog of eternal stench.
This dramatic beginning was a perfect prequel to the two years we spent in that marshy seaside town. The one that was in our budget.
Yes, it was the Aldi of beaches. But there were more spoils in the middle aisle than we ever could have imagined.
