“Pride comes before the fall,” as the saying goes, and aren’t I just a proud little munchkin, bounding down the Angas Point steps, fresh-risen sun setting the small southerly swell all a-sparkle. Textbook late-May Northern Rivers. Clear as a bell.

Like many of us on the crusty side of 50, I’ve been battling bursitis-buggered shoulders for ages – a legacy of three decades’ paddling into Burleigh’s conveyor-belt sweep. For the last few years, however, it seemed I’d reversed the trend! Thanks to a self-devised strengthening and stretching program, I’d been surfing mostly pain-free, and paddling my clubbie ski around Clarence waterways on dusk like a demon. I’d cracked the code! Go Me!

This particular morning: I’d walked an hour before the sun lifted off the horizon, done my stretches and various exercises at my quiet little cove with only an impassive Brahminy Kite looking on. With a full-ish tide and marginal swell energy, the Point would barely be breaking, but I know my mate Peely – a recent transplant to the area – will be out there, frothing. It’s not worth going home for my shooter, so I figure I’ll drive ‘round to the Point, swim out and commandeer Peely’s board for a single wave, just to complete an epic start to the day. Life Be In It and all that. 

“You’re killing it, Murdoch!” – I don’t actually say this out loud as I bolt down the stairs, jump out of my trakky daks, enter the water in boardies and start swimming out to the lineup, heading for Peely and his distinctive maroon shooter – but I may as well, because that’s so what I’m thinking.

And then it happens. Halfway out, there’s a snap, crackle and pop as (I discover later) the supraspinatus tendon in my left shoulder tears itself a new one. It’s not too agonising, but it registers as a sharp new type of pain, and instinctively I know it’s trouble. 

Peely hands the board over and I do my best to get a wave as quickly as possible – not easy with the lack of sets and a crowd nudging double figures. Eventually I’m forced to take off in front of Every-Wave-Dave, who rides behind me with a good-natured smile. 

In lieu of an actual photo of the incident, we ask the reader to suspend disbelief as Gra, at left with a wounded shoulder, drops in on Every-Wave-Dave

It’s been over four months since that wave, and I’m not sure when my next ride’s gonna be. Cry me a river. Surf long enough and you’ll find yourself sidelined sooner or later. We all deal with it. 

An intriguing variation on this all-too-common theme emerged recently, however, when I went on an actual bloody surf trip while unable to surf.

It wasn’t just any old surf trip though, it was a mate’s 50th birthday getaway to Maqai, a delightful little joint tucked away on Qamea Island in Fiji. The trip had been repeatedly pushed back due to life getting in the way, so Birthday Boy Braddo was now nearly 53. I’d signed up before the injury and Braddo kindly gave me an out, saying he’d understand if I pulled the pin, but given my appalling record of no-shows at significant friends and family events, and Braddo being one of my all-time best-ever mates, and the fact that I’ve never been to Fiji, I was more than happy to head over. 

I was expecting the week to present me with a mild existential crisis of sorts – and maybe it would have, had the waves been on the cook – but the surf was pretty average, so my psyche was never really put to the sword. 

Nonetheless, there were instructive moments of weirdness, frustration, and revelation. My lower vertebrae rejoiced at not having to lug a coffin bag hither and yon; it was oddly liberating to not care about the forecast; and a privilege to spend a week in Maqai’s rustic embrace – particularly to confirm first-hand the truth that Fijians are the most genuinely open-hearted and lovely people, er, “on the planet” – as Pottz might have put it in commentary mode. (Seriously, though, you can’t not be moved by the ingrained joy, the spirit, the heart and soul…and the singing…Fijians, they’ve got the music in ’em, hey. )

I got a sense of how things play out for the countless non-surfing partners who’ve accompanied their other halves to surf-centric resorts over the last few decades, (a mix of melancholy and Ahhhh, finally some peace…when the surfers pile into the boat and head out for hours on end). I got to see and appreciate the way the staff change gears and get shit done when the guests aren’t in the way.

Freed of the burden of surfing, Gra sips his mimosa by the pool and waits for the boys to return.

It’s funny. The further inland I took myself from the shoreline, the more connected I felt to surfing. For all its charm, Maqai doesn’t have much of a beach for walking, so a few times a day I’d pull myself up the lush, thickly-treed escarpment that rises dramatically behind the resort, up along the ridge where – with a bit of scrambling over boulders and some precarious balancing – nosebleed views of various reef passes and across to Taveuni filled my surfer’s heart with curiosity and desire. Depending on the sun, the clouds, and the light, the vistas were sometimes Mentawai, sometimes Tahiti, sometimes Kauai, sometimes Otways. And the scarp itself – a riot of ancient Banyan Figs, palms, ferns, and leaf litter – was strikingly similar to the south face of Burleigh Headland: the joint that fucked my shoulder in the first place.

I wish I could say I grew as a person, or gained some insight after a week of non-surfing on a surf trip, but I’m still the self-absorbed bastard I always was. The guys would come back from a session, report to me that it was pretty ordinary, and I’d put forth a convincing performance of someone who was truly gutted on their behalf, but if I’m honest (and if you’re reading this Cooky, Grassy, Lex, Braddo, and Geoff, I’m sorry) a not-insignificant part of me was privately punching the sky. 

If there was anything to be learnt, I suppose I had front-row seats to the ‘coming soon’ trailer of the movie, starring myself, that’ll be showing in a heartbeat: instead of being 57, I’ll be 67, 77, 87…and if I’m lucky enough to still be around down the track, surfing will be hard, and then, at some stage, impossible. 

So other fine things – friendship, laughter, nature, gratitude  –  will come increasingly to the fore, as they did at Maqai, and as they do every time we go surfing with mates. 

I’ll give ya the word, though. I’m rehabbing like a demon right now. And first order of business will be to clear my debt to Every-Wave-Dave.

// GRA MURDOCH