Free Troppo by Madelaine Dickie Page B

turned down a grass track and ridden for ages. There are no people around, only a few cows with rusty, squared-off bells. It’d be a bitch to have to walk back to the main road.
    â€˜Yeah, it’s not like in Aus where you chuck your key under the wheel of your car. It takes a bit more planning. But it’s worth it.’
    We walk clear of the palms. The ocean is the powder blue of mid-winter daydreams. About a hundred metres out, a right-hand wave peels flawless and glassy into a wide channel. The inside section is sucking up and barrelling, but further over on the shoulder there’s a second, more mellow take-off point, where the wave slows, but doesn’t stall – perfect for me! It peels almost all the way to the shore. There’s no-one on it. I startle Matt with a whoop and a clap and sprint back to the boards. It’s been pretty much two years since Fiji, two years since I’ve been out for a proper wave. Giddy, champagne-light bubbles rise in my chest, that promise of adrenaline.
    â€˜Wow, Pen, careful!’ Matt’s grinning, shaking his head at my excitement.
    I admire his board, a green twin-fin fish with hand-sketched designs across the deck. Then I look again, now dubious, at the board I picked for myself. It was the best of a bad bunch of rentals from Ibu Ayu’s, a mini-mal with a rounded nose and tail. Looking at the sunken fibreglass around the nose and fins, I find myself hoping it will float. Only one way to find out. I stripdown to my bikini, scrunch my t-shirt and shorts under a bush, scribble on some wax and zinc and run to the edge of the ocean.
    I remember another time, years ago, going for a surf with a guy I had a crush on. Stupidly, I fastened my leg-rope where we’d left our towels, way up on the sand. Then I ran down the sloping bank to the surf, leg-rope bouncing against my calf. Just as my toes were about to touch the water, I tripped on my leg-rope and flew face-first onto the sand bar. I grazed the end off my nose.
    The bloke never asked me to go for a wave again.
    This morning I’m more careful. I strap my leggy above my right ankle, wade out until the water rings my waist, then balance on the board and begin to paddle. Slow, steady strokes. My arms remembering. Matt soon catches up and we paddle out together. We move away from the channel and circle in behind the break. Coral opens out beneath us, dusty with salt and still-dark – though every now and then fish flicker past, violet, teal, lemon.
    The sun splits knife-thin above the volcanoes.
    Matt doesn’t spend any time teabagging: he turns and paddles hard into the first set wave, swooping down the face. White fans of spray open and fall from the back of the wave. I’m not so game. I let the other four set waves go, wondering where my take-off point should be and how far the coral is below the soles of my feet. Matt catches another couple then paddles over.
    â€˜What’s goin’ on? You alright?’
    â€˜Yep.’ A wave darkens to my right, a smaller one. I swing my board around and start to paddle. The wave picks the board up but as I try to jump, my feet scramble and the wave sucks and chucks me over the falls. I come up, coughing and embarrassed. Damn, Penny, come on. You used to be heaps better than this. You never would have missed such an easy take-off! I grit my teeth, paddle back toward the channel, then let it drift mebehind the break again. I’m determined not to stuff up the next wave, determined that by the end of the session I’ll be taking off on the inside and surfing with at least a fraction of the grace I used to have.
    A couple more stuff-ups, a couple of shin-grazes on the coral, then it starts coming back. I’ve always enjoyed riding longer boards and by the end of the session I’m matching Matt wave for wave. I remember that graceful, swooping pattern: how to drop into an arcing bottom turn, angle the board toward the lip of the