Lorne Beach

Footprints

September sunshine.

The sound of rolling waves.

The lens of my eyes tilts down to frame the shore: one rolled-up cuff of indigo denim, a pale bare foot poised above the smooth expanse, and a long, sharp shadow cast by the low morning sun, stretching like a dark arrow across the sand.

The September light is soft and golden. The air is cool against my skin, carrying the clean salt tang of the sea. There are no summer crowds, only the slow rhythm of small waves and the occasional distant cry of a gull.

Just behind me, the entryway sign still lingers in my mind:

No Dogs or Cats Allowed.

Cats?

I chuckle to myself, shifting my weight on the damp earth.

Who on earth would ever think to bring a cat to the beach?

Ahead of me lies a trail of deep, wet hollows.

My footprints.

I begin to step backwards, aligning my skin with my own ghost, folding the past into the present, retracing the stride.

I am a Crusoe in denim on the empty coast of Lorne, standing ten thousand miles from home.

My thoughts drift, swinging wildly across the curve of the globe.

Am I standing entirely upside down on the underbelly of the planet?

Does the water in the bathroom sink truly twist into a reverse vortex here, spinning down the drain in the opposite direction from the UK?

I make a sharp mental note to check the taps when I get back inside.

The seasons themselves have flipped upside down.

Here, the air smells of a fresh, arriving Australian spring. Back home, the English autumn is painting the trees in rust.

I switch thoughts instantly.

What is the weather like over there right now?

Are they waking to the familiar grey drizzle of home? Or perhaps an autumnal morning, golden sunlight deepening the colours of the leaves?

As my bare heel presses into the dark, yielding sand, the rhythmic motion of the tide pulls my memory back.

Back to a beloved book I have read a hundred times.

Back to the strange black-and-white television series of my childhood.

I can almost hear that haunting, beautiful theme tune carried on the surf, those grand orchestral strings that once announced the beginning of the summer holidays.

There is no mysterious stranger on this deserted southern beach.

There is only a man chasing his own tracks backwards, listening to an old melody in the crash of a foreign sea, wishing, for a moment, that he was in another place, another time.

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was a French-German television serial broadcast by the BBC from 1965. The dubbed series became a much-loved fixture of British children’s television during the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside other European imports such as The Flashing Blade and The White Horses, its haunting theme music became inseparable from the anticipation of the school summer holidays.