An Extinct Gem

• Juda Leet, Grade M, Coffs Harbour Christian Community School - Middle/Senior Campus
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

A trek through the jungle was a part of the experience. The long winding vines, the luscious shrub and the exotic wildlife, all made this place fit the role of the dense, Indonesian forest, surf adventure. But now all of that was just a distant memory. Replaced with a concert jungle. The over grown walking track was now a four lane highway leading to the wave that had made this island famous.

This once deserted wave. Oh how I remember the look of the water rapping over the reef, the way it would twirl and dance like a ballerina giving the dance of her life. Every morning waking up to her perfection again. No one knew about it, no one was in the water. We would surf all day until we couldn't stand up and we would have to drag our limp bodies up the beach to our ocean side paradise and crash in the sand and refill our depleted energy for the next day so we could do it all again.

But now that utopia no longer exists. The crashing giant of commercialisation that had destroyed this paradise and it's friends pollution, crowds and destruction of the local wildlife, that come along with it. The crowds came with the building of the resort and with the crowds came pollution. But out of no where came a continent shaking earthquake followed by a tsunami that deformed the reef and halted the building of the luxury five star resort. The building developers decided that the wave was no longer worth their time and money and abandoned their half finished concert palace, leaving it to deteriorate and fall away.

The wave is no longer the gem of the archipelago, with rubbish floating through the crowded line up. The destruction of a pristine surfing reserve has gone on without a waver of a fight. Looking upon the line up, the crowds and piles of rubbish floating in the water and washed upon the beach show the pain that this once beautiful, untouched wave is suffering.

But every now and then a wave sneaks through the line up, unridden and an onlooker can watch as the ballerina dances along the reef, not as free and elegant as it was once but you can see that she is trying to push through the constant onslaught that devastation has brought her.