Westbrook, KZN North Coast

As a family, we didn’t have a specific beach destination that we travelled to every year for a holiday. That’s because we lived at the beach. I grew up in a small coastal village north of Durban called Westbrook, and because I come from a generation where entertainment happened outdoors and not on a screen, I spent most of my waking life on Westbrook Beach. (I’m the blonde one in the photos.) I was dunked in rock pools before I could walk and was dumped by the shore break before I could swim properly. One dreamy summer evening I kissed my first boy on that beach, awkwardly I might add. Later that summer I saw the same boy kissing another girl. I remember running dramatically into the ocean and crysurfing myself better. I learnt how to drive in the parking lot, and later how to handbrake turn a Toyota Conquest. (Sorry, Mom.) I sulked on more than one occasion while shouting angrily at the waves. The beach is where I didn’t care about being an adult, about dieting, earning money or worrying about my future because everything was about existing in the moment. One summer I spent so much time in the surf that my cheeks developed small roasties from sunburn, despite using industrial-strength luminous zinc sunblock – to the detriment of all our towels and bedding at home. There were only two reasons my friends and I would come out of the water: Either we were starving or the easterly had picked up, bringing dreaded bluebottles along with it. If it was food we needed, we’d chuck our pocket money into a pot – money we’d usually have earned by returning Coke bottles for a deposit – and we’d buy a half-loaf of white bread and Simba chips for a chip bunny. This seems to be a meal only surf kids from KZN understand. If the conditions for swimming and surfing weren’t great, we’d stack our boards in the shade and play one-bounce with a beat-up soccer ball until our feet blistered on the melting tar. Much later, we’d drag our weary bodies homeward, usually enticed by the thought of a cheese snackwich and a dip in the neighbour’s pool – but not before we’d all agreed to meet up the next day so we could do it all over again. – Bryony McCormick