Last weekend I went to Phillip Island but I didn’t surf I just looked at the Scottish highland cattle. Back at the house Steve held it up and asked me, ‘What do you think this is?’ I peered at it. ‘Some kind of snake skin thing?’ ‘It’s a shark egg. They lay them in the seaweed.’ So it was with Attenboroughesque delight that I found one at Anglesea yesterday.

We ended up surfing Urquart’s Bluff. It was uncrowded and perfect. Dragonflies were skimming along the water’s surface. The dense trees on that part of the coast were the colour of undiluted koola cordial. Red stones on the beach. The paddle out nearly killed us but once out the back I got into the feeling of the ocean. The rise and fall.

At one point on the drive a pelican flew over us. Graham asked me what my favorite bird is. ‘Black cockatoo for shape. Magpie for warble. But crow overall’. Today when I was reading about the history of the coast I learned that Urquhart’s original inhabitants were the Wada Wurrung clan. The eagle and the crow are their totem.