Aunty has a priceless view of a little lake, the sea, the sand and the waves. Zealous real estate agents can't budge her from the nest she built 45 years ago when Ma and Pa Bendall rode The Point.
Aunty still walks her ageing joints on the gritty sands and inspects the fickle seas and is greeted respectfully by real locals when she shuffles up to the cafe for "a cuppa" tea with Nana Brine.
Aunty is still amazed on those special days when the fickle rock shelves, the tides and the cycles of nature's cyclonic fury combine with the cool morning airs rolling down from the ancient volcanic valleys inland to form fluid platforms for local veterans like Darryl Meredith.
And Aunty is once again a small girl sitting on the floor beside the wireless during the Great Depression listening intently to a story from her father, The Carpenter, about the time when he was a teenager, just after The Great War and he swam against this fella called The Duke who came here from far away and caught waves on a hunk of wood.
And she smiles to herself, thinking her dad was pulling her leg.
Surf pics by Brett Wortman courtesy of
Darryl Meredith
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