CACTUS
(painting by Ron
Taylor)
A near
tragedy
Cactus is a fairly rugged spot in
and out of the water, it's the surf spot of plenty; plenty of good surf, plenty
of heat, plenty of flies and plenty of big whites, and my last trip in the sixties
almost ended up a disaster.
Cactus is situated near a small town named Penong on the Nullarbor
Plain just at the start of the Great Australian Bight. If you are not up with
your Latin, Nullarbor means "no trees" and it can be very intimidating.
It is in fact a desert and can get really warm there, especially during the
summer months. Cactus itself was actually called Point Sinclair and was given
its current name by the first guys who drove up there, looking for surf. Well,
when they first saw it, the surf was pretty poor and someone said, "this
place is cactus!" meaning no good and boy, how wrong they were, as Cactus
is now regarded as one of the best breaks in Oz!
It was Christmas time, 1967 and summer, the surf was pretty good
all week and getting bigger every day. One morning we woke up to find it closing
out right across the bay. Someone mentioned that a few kilometres back along
the coast there was a spot called Point Bell and it should be working perfectly,
so we decided to go and have a look. This meant doing a lot of driving through
some pretty rough terrain and most of it private property.
We were driving through one piece of property along a track, which had probably
been made by the owner while working at clearing the Mallee scrub. All of a
sudden there was one loud bang closely followed by another and upon inspection
we found that we had two blowouts after driving over a mallee root. Anybody
travelling through this sort of country always carries a couple of spare tyres.
We had a couple of spares but had used them earlier in the week, so we were
in quite a bit of trouble and it looked like being a very warm day. Three of
the guys decided to walk down to Point Bell to see if anyone was down there.
One of them was silly enough to walk down in just a pair of board shorts and
no shoes, it took him eight hours to crawl back, and when he arrived he was
a pretty sick bloke.
I guess if there is any blame to be laid I have to be honest
and say my good friend Johnny Matson would have to wear it, as he should have
known better than to drive at the speed he was doing seeing we had no spare
tyres. Two of the guys who walked down to the point came back after a few hours
and told us the bad news; no one was there. By this time it was starting to
get pretty warm and we didn't have much water left, only an esky one quarter
full of dirty ice water with a couple of cans of canned fruit. Now, I'm no hero,
but I didn't feel like hanging around there waiting for the heat to decide our
future, so I decided to walk back the way we had come, remembering we had passed
a building of some sort a number of kilometres back. John, who must have been
feeling that he was to blame for our predicament (nothing was said about this)
decided to come with me.
Well, I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around myself and John
used a large beach towel, plus the esky with the remaining water, which by this
time was almost empty. The heat was really oppressive and getting hotter all
the time. It seemed like we had only walked a few hundred metres or so when
we were looking for some shade, but, as I mentioned before there were no trees,
only small Mallee scrub. Now this delightful little walk we were taking was
during the warmest part of the day, and the stops we were making were getting
more frequent and the starts were getting harder to make. A number of times
I really had to rip into John to get him moving again, as a person can perish
in this sort of country in just a few hours. If the heat didn't get you, the
flies would, and they were like wedge-tailed eagles. The soil around here is
a dark red and very dusty, which, combined with the heat, takes its toll as
the soles of the boots I was wearing were starting to peel, while John was only
wearing Japanese joggers (thongs) and he was really starting to look crook.
My biggest worry was that all the country was starting to look the same, I mean
we could have been walking in circles and wouldn't know it as there seemed to
be tracks all over the place. Eventually we came to a small rise and away in
the distance through the heat haze I thought I could see the reflection of the
sun on what might be a roof.
We staggered on for another two hours. Over every slight hill
or bend in the track we looked for any sign of a building, and there was none,
only more tracks going in all directions and more flies. By this time we were
both getting pretty stuffed and all the water was gone. It was then that we
turned a corner to see a water tank sitting on the side of a small hill. We
both rushed up there only to find that it was pretty old and pretty empty, and
that did nothing to boost our morale. Anyway to make a short story long, we
rounded the next corner to find a house, and that really did boost our morale.
As we walked up to the front door, we could hear this loud buzzing noise only,
to discover that if we thought the flies were bad out in the open, ALL their
mates were here under the Veranda in the shade. I knocked on the door (rather
stupid when you think of it) as there seemed to be no one at home, so we decided
to go around the back to see if we could find some sort of a tap or anything
to do with water. To our surprise we discovered there was someone at home, a
young woman and her mother were sitting in the back part of the house.
It was no surprise to them to see two people who were in a lot
of trouble, and before we knew it, they were pouring lovely cold water down
our throats. After we had just about drank their fridge dry we told them that
we had left another three guys somewhere back down the track. The mother then
very quickly got on the two-way radio to her son, who was, believe it or not,
out harvesting a crop of wheat, explaining to him about our situation , asking
him to come home. This young bloke was quite a character himself, there he was
out harvesting his crop in this heat and now, the next minute he was driving
his Jeep (which ran on four cylinders and diesel) to help out five guys in strife,
in the scrub. We went with him of course, and as we got closer to where our
vehicle was, we came across the car and the other three guys moving very slowly
in our direction. The other guys had not been just sitting around either, they
had managed to somehow stuff the two tyres with grass, enough so that they could
get the vehicle mobile. Now this young bloke, sizing up the situation, jumped
out of the Jeep, ripped off the two punctured tyres, patched and pumped them
up by hand within what seemed like minutes. You know, he and his folks would
not accept any reward for helping us out, so we decided to leave some cash in
his back shed where he'd find it after we were gone.
A few years later I was travelling through Ceduna, a large town
over that way, we ran into him at a service station. You know, he was pretty
upset that we left the cash. The breed of people that live in this part of the
country are pretty tough and almost reflect their environment, but once you
get to know them, they are the friendliest and most eager to help people I've
ever met.
Cactus desolation
The first time I surfed Cactus I took the
ring off my finger and had it in my mouth for the whole time I surfed that first
session. The reason for doing this was I thought the glint of gold flashing
under the water might attract a big fish. The fear of the Big White is very
common at Cactus and I don't think I've ever heard from anyone who's surfed
there who hasn't had some respect for what lurks beneath those waters. About
the only time one forgets that fear is when one is out there and locked into
a Cactus Tube.
It's not just the sharks you've got to
worry about at cactus it's mainly the flies and some of the locals. One in particular
"Moose" who happens to be a mate of mine. Believe me, you wouldn't
want him for an enemy. Even Mark Warren in his atlas of Australia surfing gave
some friendly advice no to get in his way. Another dangerous creature to be
aware of in this area is the March Fly which lands on any part of your body,
completely undetected and then takes huge hunks out of your flesh. The March
Fly is not a LITTLE fly; in fact he's quite big (some people believe he's crossbred
with the Wedge-Tailed Eagle). The thing is he lands on you without you knowing
it and starts a feeding frenzy and there is no buzzing like a normal fly. So
you have a choice: you can escape his feeding frenzy by going in the water and
taking your chances with Whitey!
And apart from what you heard or read,
Cactus was first discovered and ridden by a guy by the name of Dennis (Snake)
Ferret who was working in the area as a Wool Classer at the time.
Cactus
Sandhills
And now the famous
Mouse Plague...
The area around
Cactus is almost a desert, nothing grows over a few feet high and looking at
the place you wouldn't expect it to be over abundant with wildlife, wrong! On
one of our trips turn promoted a lot of vegetation growth and as a result of
this growth a few of the local creatures decided to increase their population.
And as we were driving past some of the wheat growing properties we noticed
some of the large wheat storage bins and silos seemed to be moving with a rippling
effect. On closer inspection we discovered that the cause of this unusual effect
was millions of mice. At night, while we were sleeping, these little cuties
would be crawling everywhere and all over us. There where also these cute little
Geckos that were enjoying their own little plague. Now you’re probably
thinking "Oh yeah! Is that all! Only mice and geckos, surely a few little
critters like that would be no problem" Wrong again! Other
animals feed on mice and geckos, some of those include snakes, and in this area
we have one of the world’s deadliest snakes going around, the King Brown.
The whole bloody area was alive with the damn things and we had to be
careful where we walked and sleeping became a bit of a nightmare (excuse the
pun). I’d like to point out that anything like civilisation is miles and
miles away from here. There’s no Motels, electricity, phones, fresh water
or help if one gets into any serious strife. One morning I went hunting with
a mate of mine Ian"Bongo" Bradley for some rabbits with our Rifles.
We climbed to the top of a sand dune and as we looked across a small valley
we could see two of our acquaintances that were doing the same thing. They were
walking within a few metres between each other. Bongo spotted a snake in the
middle of them, raised his rifle and fired a shot at it. These two mates of
ours thought that we were shooting at them and to my horror returned fire and
for the next two hours we were dodging bullets. I guess we were lucky that they
were bad shots, even so it took our minds off the snake population for a couple
of hours.
Cactus
was also known as Rosella Point (A brand name for canned food here), because
of all the empty cans left lying around the joint before the guys that frequented
the place heard about the word "ecology".
Signs pointed to
Shark horror - photos
and story
Photos by
Ron & Sibylle Taylor