“Into the Sea”
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Into the Sea is the first novel from Australian writer, Jay Laurie. Vividly and simply told, it is about growing up behind the dunes, friendship, travelling into the unknown and living in rhythm with the sea. Billie (Will) is a small kid bleached by the ocean. He surfs. Riley’s bigger, bites his nails and pretends he […]
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After toddlerhood on a sheep farm in the mountain ranges of New South Wales, none of which I can remember, I grew up in the 70s in a suburb of Sydney with my parents and a large tribe of siblings. The trips to the nearest beach on the weekend or up the coast to a rented fibro shack for Summer holidays were high points and the start of an enduring affinity with the sea.
Then we moved interstate to South Australia as the teenage years neared. New town, new school, new faces and distant surf beaches with freezing water. So started a serious period of beachlessness that would in time be made up for during uni days with a wetsuit (in 80s pastels), friends equally up for putting waves before lectures and cars spluttering along, needles never more than a degree or two above empty. At first we ventured to the mid coast, quickly graduating to the south coast and then it was on to the State’s wild west coasts. A few years down the track, bar and factory work money in hand, came travels to the warmer water of the eastern States for the long Summer holidays. Then came my first overseas surf trip to Hawaii, Mexico and Africa and the seed was forever sown. Some time later, my girlfriend (now wife) and I decided to move States for a while. After getting side tracked in the South Pacific for a year and a half crewing on yachts, hitching on cargo boats and exploring the islands between Tahiti and New Zealand and spending mostly terrific, but occasionally alarming, times in the elements and with an evolving spectrum of interesting people, we finally ended up in Western Australia. Since then I’ve continued to roam coastlines all over the place in and outside Australia, recording adventures in journals by hand. I live near the sea in Western Australia with my wife, our two young children and our alert eared Kelpie/Huntaway and get in it whenever I can. Into the Sea is my first novel.Into the Sea is the first novel from Australian writer, Jay Laurie. Vividly and simply told, it is about growing up behind the dunes, friendship, travelling into the unknown and living in rhythm with the sea.
Billie (Will) is a small kid bleached by the ocean. He surfs. Riley’s bigger, bites his nails and pretends he does too. They roam their beachside suburb, nose drip over their first surf magazine and start to dream of far off places. Suddenly out of a heatwave, a fire erupts to take more than their bushland.
Later, in their mid twenties, the friends reconnect driving across the desert. There they live in the heat, dust and cold salt water, amongst a melting pot of passing travellers and violent incensed locals. Riley forgets a girl he thought he knew and Will’s drug addiction gives way to blindness to life beyond the sea which may prove to be even more destructive.
Musings around the campfire become real as Will leaves everything and heads for the tropical islands of Indonesia. At first a phone call, then a postcard, then nothing. Eventually Riley, in a strong relationship with stable work, sets out to try to track him down and, heading deep into the islands, starts to learn things he never knew he should.
Through the early years of a friendship between two boys, Into the Sea touches on first freedoms, the seesawing transition from innocence to adolescence and the impact of sudden loss. In later parts, the novel powerfully evokes life on the road and the unpredictability of trusting to chance travelling in remote places.
Along the way, it richly and sensitively describes the landscapes of Australia and Indonesia and their people. The book also captures, with honesty and depth, what it is to ride waves, to be a surfer and, in a more subtle way, the trials, if not impossibilities, of loving one.
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Description Randolph Stow was one of the great Australian writers of his generation. His novel To the Islands – written in his early twenties after living on a remote Aboriginal mission – won the Miles Franklin Award for 1958. In later life, after publishing seven remarkable novels and several collections of poetry, Stow’s literary output […]
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