I missed my niece’s performance in the school musical because I was busy with a song and dance routine of my own entitled getting away with murder. I went camping with the boys instead.

Never being a stickler for detailed forward planning, I knew that both events were looming somewhere on the horizon but found out too late that they actually occupied the same square on the calendar.

Selfishly, I chose the camping option, figuring the stage was set for plenty more school shows – and that two old college mates celebrating their 40th birthdays on the same weekend was an occurrence unlikely to be repeated.

I don’t know anything about high school musical, however my own two youngsters who proudly went along to support their cousin have been enthusiastically filling me in since I made my smelly and ruffled return from Flat Rock camping ground, near Ballina.

The five-year-old, Clementine, frightened me at first while I was having my first shave upon re-entering mainstream society.

“Wildcats in the house!” she bellowed from behind. I had spent three days sleeping amidst nature’s elements, and with my fight-or-flight response mechanism finely honed, I first considered jumping through the bathroom mirror to escape a marauding pack of feline predators.

I was relieved with what the reflection revealed. My girl was standing in the doorway singing what was obviously one of her favourite numbers from the play whilst executing highly convincing side-to-side movements.

Other members of my family – in an attempt to make me feel worse – went to considerable effort to ensure they didn’t miss the performance.

My brother drove down to Terranora to pick up our dad. Mum came up from the Gold Coast as well. (I haven’t mentioned it was her birthday on the same weekend yet, have I? I have been too scared to until now.)

Dad stayed at our place for the weekend, where he was prepared loving meals by my wife before she took the wheel of the family ferry service and delivered him home on the Sunday – kids in the back seat of the station wagon doing puzzles.

I had no hand in any of this as I was busily tending to my own requirements in another state, such as surfing, drinking afternoon beers and taking enormous naps.

If it is any consolation, I did hurt myself. I cut my toe on a rock, and it still stings even now, not that I am game to mention this point to anybody around my place. It is far safer to suffer in silence.

My injury was nothing compared to what happened to Johnny, however.

I’m not sure what family commitments he was dodging on the home front, but they must have been significant if there were any karmic forces mingled with the ocean ones as we balanced precariously with our boards on a rocky shelf weighing up the icy, grey sea about 5.30am on the first morning.

It was my idea to jump off the front, so I can’t help but feel more than a little responsible for what happened next.

I went first, and rode a gentle surge to the safety of deeper water. As I paddled out further, I climbed what looked an innocuous and friendly swell, thinking it would be an ideal one for the other boys to ride the back of once it crashed up onto the rocks

And it would have been had Johnny’s leg rope not snagged on some metamorphic anvil-like structure at the critical moment when he was in full mid-air extension.

When you are in a raging sea, surrounded by barnacle encrusted boulders, it is not desirable to be tethered to terra firma by a gigantic rubber band. I think everybody who witnessed the unfortunate episode, and particularly Johnny himself, would say amen to that fact.

For as much as you endeavour to swim to safety, you are catapulted back to catastrophe, like a hapless coyote from the Road Runner cartoons.

Eventually the leash snapped as our camping companion was hit by another wall of swirling water, lifting and cart-wheeling him back over the unforgiving terrain, like a cork on the tide.

Out of the white foam, you could see the occasional arm and leg as he went sliding back, disappearing and reappearing from various jagged crevices.

From the water where I sat, I was relieved to see a perplexed yet smiling face finally emerge from the froth. Relief turned to uncontrollable laughter.

He had torn his skin to ribbons, but there was nothing that required serious medical attention. Later we would buy Ballina out of Betadine.

To be continued ...