The Lost Holiday
It was our second anniversary, we were in Bermagui, and my shoes were filling with blood.
We had set out for the Great Ocean Road, a road trip that had been planned for months, a much-needed holiday after a long, challenging year. Delays on the highway had drawn out the first leg of the drive from six hours to ten, and when we finally arrived at our destination, the caravan park was being buffeted by a south-easterly gale. Not the beginning we were hoping for. With the light fading, we had just enough time to set up the van, throw back a quick pre-made cocktail, and fall asleep to the sound of howling wind.
By morning the wind had subsided, but the skies were still overcast. Our dreams of sunshine and ocean swims were feeling more out of reach by the minute, but we decided to make the best of it: a breakfast of coffee and pastries at our favourite bakery; a peaceful walk along the break-wall; a plan to embrace rest and relaxation over adventure.
Then the air started to warm. Little by little the sky removed its grey blanket, starting from the hills in the west and finally ending at the oceanic horizon in the east. All of a sudden, it was summer. One of the reasons we had returned here was to swim in the Blue Pool, an opaline, ocean-fed, 50-meter lap pool carved into basalt, and we took this as our chance to dive in. Just as quickly as the weather had changed, we threw on our swimmers and began wandering up the hill. With less than 10 minutes to the pool, we could almost feel the water on our skin.
Reinvigorated by the sudden change, we began chatting happily, randomly, about our names and the elements they represent. My name means “untended land,” so it is clearly an earth name. My wife’s name means “spring of life,” and while she has always taken the word “spring” to mean the season, I suggested that it meant water. Though she is a lover of forests, my wife seeks out the water, comes alive in it, and so we agreed that this was us: water and earth.
As we wound our way along the narrow road, the coast came into full view, with bands of blue water and atmosphere stretching as far as the eye can see, framed below by a volcanic outcrop of sandstone and shale. We stop to take it all in, and just beyond the scrub before us, we notice a rocky platform extending out towards the sea, offering a little lookout above the water. My wife skips ahead to the end as I hang back and take some photos. From the edge of the lookout, she calls back to me:
“You need to come down and see this.”
I make my way down to her side and hang my head over the edge of the rocks. Directly beneath me, hidden from the view above, is a luminous natural waterhole. It is shaped like a kidney and filled with crystal-clear water, so you can see the bright aqua at the bottom and the ring of honey-gold that encircles it. We look at each other and share the same thought: this is ours. This is what we’ve come for.
As seasoned hikers, entry wasn’t too much of an ordeal. The easiest route was an eight-foot drop over a ravine that channels the sea into the waterhole. The drop itself was sheer, wet, and offered little grip, but that was an advantage for getting down. We figured that the best way to get across was to gently slide as far towards the edge as possible, then boost ourselves onto the other side of the ravine. I opted to go first, knowing that I could help my wife down more easily than she could help me, but instead of making a graceful jump and landing on my feet, I get hit by an incoming wave and then land on my hands and knees. I look back up at the wall I’d just come down and wonder how I’d get back up, but figured that we’d probably continue to move our way around the coastline, rather than backtracking.
The pool was even more vibrant up close, a cosmic blue enriched by the visible veins of quartz and chlorite running into it. We couldn’t dive in fast enough. The water was cool and pure with a fresh mineral taste. Restorative. We washed away our journey, our tiredness, the year that had brought us here. A feeling of relief and lightness came over me. Everything was going to be okay. As we swam, we surveyed the little cove around us and noticed just behind the pool was a small cave with a single tree growing in front. The whole place was filled with beauty and wonder. A tiny hidden paradise. We wondered why nobody else was here, and the answer to that question was about to become abundantly clear: if this place was hard to access, it was almost impossible to depart.
After our swim, we decided to simply keep walking around the undulating headlands, gripping the turbidite walls as we went, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to work. There were wide fissures and ravines everywhere, usually a couple of feet across, and the incoming waves made them too dangerous to cross. We turned back around and tried to find a way up from the cove behind the waterhole. There was a path carved into the sandstone around the little cave, but it proved far too steep and slippery to scale: the sandstone weathered to a soft dust and the angle itself was almost 90 degrees. As the tide continued to pour in, an unfamiliar sense of panic began to grow. Were we stuck? How could we let this happen?
Returning to our entry point, a second look inspired even less confidence than the first. But then my wife noticed something we hadn’t seen the first time: the platform we were originally standing on didn’t drop straight into the water after all. Instead, there was another rocky platform below it, one that we could walk around that led back up to the road. All we would need to do was get across the ravine, which was not only wider, lower, and deeper at this point, but also rapidly filling with the returning tide. And so we waited, counting the sets until we found a break, and then in two quick steps, we were on the other side. We took a brief moment to celebrate before a rogue wave lifted us from our feet and the swell smashed us against the rocks.
You can have a surprising number of thoughts in just a few seconds. I don’t know if I saw the wave coming or if I just felt it, but I recall being aware that we were going to get wet. Having our clothes soaked, I thought, was going to be the worst of it. But then we were suddenly and completely underwater. I couldn’t quite process how this had happened. It didn’t make sense. My thoughts shifted to the worst-case scenario. That we were done. I reached out to grab hold of my wife, but I couldn’t find her. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t really know where I was. The feeling of losing her hit me and I scrambled to make contact. I distinctly remember thinking, “what will I do without her?” and “what will I tell the girls?” but before any of those thoughts could go further, it was all over. I was back on the other side of the ravine and my wife was beside me wearing an expression that I’ve never seen on her before: a mixture of fear and confusion.
“I’m damaged,” she says.
We were both drenched, head to toe. Her backpack was above her head and she was missing a sandal. Both of us had lost our sunglasses. My hat had somehow stayed on. Her legs were streaming with blood. Bright, thick, milky blood. It looked like paint, like the type of fake blood they use in old horror films. It was pouring out of her and collecting in the little rock pools all around us. I was bleeding too; I couldn’t tell exactly where my wounds were, but there was a thick crimson rim around my feet. We looked at each other and realised that we need to get out, urgently.
We were forced to accept that the only way out was from where we came down. I insisted that my wife went up first. She was clearly the most impacted and I know it will be easier for me to push her up than for her to push me. At least one of us had a definite shot. She threw off her other sandal (sadly, her favourites) and I boosted her up. As she wriggled her way to safety, I began to figure out my climb. There was one small piece of rock that offered some purchase for a foot and a couple of little smooth knobs for my hands above, but between these spots was a big smooth bulge. Fuelled by adrenaline, I grabbed on as best I could, distributing my weight across the rock face. I knew that as soon as I released my foot, I’d have to pull myself up with what little grip I had, otherwise I’ll fall backwards into the ravine. Somehow I managed to lift and slide myself up over the bulge and onto the plateau above. To this day I still don’t understand how.
“Praise the Lord,” she says.
We begin to make our way back to the campsite, walking our ruptured feet across rock and dirt and road and grass. At the caravan park, we had managed to secure one of the last available sites and it happened to have an ensuite, something we’d never booked before. This turned out to be an unexpected source of good fortune. My wife was able to go straight into a private shower while I hobbled down the road to the chemist and proceeded to buy a hundred dollars worth of first-aid products. Bandages and creams and tapes, all mindlessly scooped into a little blue basket. A sales assistant asks if I need help, and the look of horror on his face when he sees my feet fills me with dread. I don’t feel any pain yet, but I know that once the shock wears off that will be a different story. I convince myself that if I keep moving, keep active, I’ll outrun it. There’s a part of me that feels like I’m not even really there. Like this isn’t really happening. A sense of unreality to it all.
When I return, my wife is in bed and her whole body is shaking, surges of adrenaline running through her, little tremors everywhere. I try to calm her while I begin to remove the dried blood, apply antiseptic cream, and then cover it all in a patchwork of plaster and cotton. I do the same to my own wounds, all of it in a bit of a mental fog. We seek advice from a friend who has recently become a doctor, and she suggests, quite seriously, that we head to the ER. We push away the thought, opting to just rest for a while and see how we feel in the afternoon. A couple of hours go by and we decide to reassess the damage with clearer heads.
As I gently peel off the bandages, the full scale of her injuries is revealed. There are deep, raw gashes on her toes and ankles, with flesh hanging open at the sides of each one. Her knee has at least two deep cuts, but the mass of congealed blood covering the area makes it hard to see the full extent of the damage. It’s her inner right thigh that concerns me the most, though. It’s covered in lacerations, turning her caramel-coloured skin a bright pink. There are dozens of long, shallow cuts running in all directions. It looks like she’s been mauled by an animal. My wounds are not nearly as extensive as hers, but the ones I do have are deep and wide. The surface skin on the side of my big toe is gone, revealing a ruby-red layer underneath. I have a constellation of lesions covering my right shin, and an assortment of slashes all over both legs and feet, including a particularly deep one on the inside of my left foot.
We begin packing our van immediately and head off to Bega Hospital for treatment.
Of the roughly 270 drowning deaths that occur each year in Australia, about 13 of these happen from waves on rocks, the way that our accident did. Most of these happen to fishermen, and are usually the result of misjudged conditions and freak waves, just like ours. On the drive to the hospital, we talk about how lucky we are. Neither of us can quite comprehend what has happened. My wife, a lifelong ocean adventurer, still can’t fathom it. She keeps saying that in all of her years in the sea, nothing like this has ever happened to her. We’re both rattled, but we also realise that things could have easily been so much worse. Even the emergency doctors that tend to us are amazed that we didn’t injure our backs or heads, which could have been fatal. While we can’t quite walk, we somehow walked away from disaster.
All this happened, not only on the very first morning of the first day of our trip, but on our second wedding anniversary.
We return to camp later that night: cleaned up, patched up, vaccinated, and armed with painkillers and antibiotics. Then we fall into a deep sleep.
The next day we discuss what to do next, and optimistically, we decide to continue on. Our next stop is a couple of nights in a Melbourne hotel. We can recoup and heal there, and this is exactly what we do, barely leaving our bed, hoping that by the time we reach the coast we’ll be just about ready to get back into the water. But of course, this wasn’t to be. These wounds were never going to heal that quickly, but worse still, my wife has a terrible reaction to the drugs, growing sicker each day, often unable to eat. Still, we decide to press on. With the pressures of work and life and parenting, this trip would be the only opportunity to get some extended time alone together all year. We manage to make it as far as Anglesea and decide to stop overnight at a motel. The beach is just within reach, everything that we have come for, but it just wasn't to be. The next morning, we decide to turn the van around and head home.
Searching for meaning from a traumatic event is natural, but it runs the risk of over-inflating the significance of it and your own importance. I’ve found it best to avoid mythologising your own life. A grain of salt is good for the ego. But I’ve found it hard to shake this one: the way it unfolded and everything that came after.
During our week back home, we started to imagine what we’d be doing if we were still down there, and so we checked the weather conditions on our phones. What we discovered was shocking: Victoria was experiencing its worst heatwave since 2019 and the entire coastline was being shut down by emergency services. “Catastrophic” was the word the Bureau of Meteorology used, already comparing it to the previous Black Summer that saw over 24 million hectares burnt, destroying around 3,000 homes, killing over 400 people and countless numbers of insects and animals. The area where we would have been staying was being evacuated, with all beaches and bushland closed. The Hume Highway, our route back home, was also closed. The state was bracing itself for unprecedented heat, with inland conditions reaching over 45 degrees. Had we been able to stay, our holiday would have turned into a nightmare, trapped over 1000km from home in unbearable heat as firestorms so intense they produce their own weather consumed the land around us. As it turns out, the wave that had so badly injured us and sent us home had actually protected us from something worse.
For the first time since it happened, I stop thinking about our experience: the stolen vacation, the disrupted anniversary. Instead, I think about the record-breaking wind activity that brought that wave up in the first place. I think about the heatwave and the apocalyptic fires and those who will lose their homes and possibly their lives. I think about the way that these events seem not only more severe each time, but closer together in occurrence. My wife and I talk about getting back down to the Great Ocean Road in the future, but I wonder if that’s a future that will even come to pass. Australia’s worst natural disaster to date occurred here only five years ago, and the stage was now set for another event of the same scale. With the frequency between these catastrophes narrowing, I wondered if we’re entering a time when they’re so close together that summer holidays, and perhaps daily life in much of this region, is a thing of the past.
While I lament the loss of one, my hope now is that we haven’t lost all the ones to come. My wife tells me I sound pessimistic, and maybe she’s right, but after this, all I know for sure is that nothing is forever. As the natural monuments of the Great Ocean Road continue to disappear, as entire townships are burnt to the ground, as a simple waterhole swim ends in near-death, I’ll try and hold on to every moment as if it’s the last.