Home » People » debbizo » "White Mecca 1975"

White Mecca 1975

uploaded: Sat, Mar 20, 2010 @ 5:48 AM

by	debbizo
Featuring	tethia
length	4:21
BPM	75-80
Recommends	Recommends (3)

White Mecca 1975

I was thirteen and wore a bikini.I was lean then. We were all lean. We would lean with the steep of the climb. Into the steep. Up the slope. Into sky. I don’t remember clouds. Just that glistening sand heap. The ridge of its crest, precise on Mediterranean blue. Everything so precise. We were lean and precise. Our muscles tingled with the climb. No dune grass then. No spinifex to grasp. No grass to grip. Only white and blue before us. Grains of glass glittering in sand. We were cool in dark glasses. Shaz, Carlos and Dazza; the kid they called Fat Albert, and me. All lean, except Albert who would puff up the dune red-faced, dripping sweat, like a pork roast oozing dripping. The only one in jeans. Fat Albert - we all forgot his real name. He never swam. The slide down dunes was his ultimate thrill. We cheered him on. Always the fastest. Shifting his weight for the slide, he excelled. Dragging himself out of the river like a wet blimp. We walked barefoot from Christies to Port Noarlunga. No fear of needles. Along the Esplanade. Up and over the bluff. Bypassing the jetty. We sought our white Mecca. Our ecstasy. Our ascension. The struggle of climbing. The thrill of the ride. All the way. Over the edge. The cool of the river. Its bed of thick mud swallowed more than our ankles, even then. We joked about bodies of dead cats - growling ghosts- deep down in the suck of mud. We felt their rough tongues on the soles of our feet. Clambered out quickly to the sanctuary of white. We stopped at the kiosk to buy orange frosties. Strip off the sticky paper. Cool our tongues on coloured ice. Remembering how, in winter, the river would rise above its banks and flood the kiosk. Its cool concrete floor - a balm for burning feet. There were always sandbags stacked outside. The heat was our god though. The sun. Our summer lifestyle. Hormones. Pulsing in speedos. Our lean teen summer. Whole days climbing that sand dune. As our sun-god travelled across the sky. Aching for water. From the kiosk, we trekked along the dunes, in the rush of voices - the laughing, the squealing. Someone would bring a sheet of masonite, or an old tin signboard, salvaged from a vacant block of land. (We’d brush the snail crust off the tin and use it to slide on.) We climbed the steep white into sky. Again and again. Almost breathless. We were soft shift in glistening sand. We queued at the crest of white on blue - like a wave of sand - gathering to break over the wetlands, the estuary. Gazing out across the river, the road-bridge, as cars silently ascended and descended the grey bitumen strip of Norwood Hill. Finally, we grasped the edge of the sun-hot sheet and blessed it like a prayer mat. Shifting our weight for the adrenaline slide. Gasping in the air rush, amid the cheering. Down the pristine slope. Sometimes, all the way to the river. Into the splash of dubious water. The shocking cool. The ghosts of dead cats licking our heels.

(c)Deb Matthews-Zott