We were in Hermanus, South Africa, and I think it was Greg, me, Rob Dekenah, Lee Dicks, John Gilbert and maybe someone(s) I’ve forgotten about. We were camping just outside of Hermanus in a place called Onrus but were kicked out of the campsite because Lee sat on my sunburnt back and I freaked out. I think it was just an excuse to get rid of us because we were quite wild and the campsite owner was a bit of a grumpy old bastard.
Anyway, a few days before new years’ eve we got booted out of camp and found a place to sleep. It was just off Hermanus beach and to get there you had to either wade through the waist-high water and climb up some rocks or climb under these massive tree-like bushes. The bushes stretched for ages and getting to the place that way you had to drop underneath them and crouch through a maze.
But the small clearing was perfect. We had privacy to smoke and drink and lie around in the sun all day. We kept six-packs of beer cold by stashing them under rocks in the water below. The rocks you had to climb up were about one and a half stories high. We’d jump off them into the water below. It was amazing.
On new years’ eve night there was a great party on the beach - hundreds of people - and the stretch of sand was dotted with bonfires all along. Every fire had a boombox playing whatever music was big in 1992 (Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Eric Clapton, BoyzIIMen, Michael Jackson, Guns ‘n Roses). John Gilbert and I, for some weird reason, pretended to be foreign. I pretended to be Canadian saying my name was John Sonner (A Canadian skateboarder, I think) and John put on a bizarre German accent. We were probably a bit drunk, but in reality we were a mite strange anyway.
The beach party was broken up when the residents in the houses along the beachfront complained and the police arrived. I remember seeing them standing in a line in the parking lot above the beach. They must have thought there were far too many people for them to arrest or chase off by conventional means, so they fired teargas into the crowd.
I was sitting talking to a guy who was telling me about his time in the army. I remember the sound of the teargas cannisters being fired - whoomp - and they fired a few of them. A cannister landed next to me, it looked like a can of deodorant, and I was too drunk to realise what it was so the guy grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. I ran up the hill in the direction of the bushes, thinking I’d find my way back to camp, but got to the top of the hill and smacked my head on one of the treelike branches and rolled back down the hill. I ended up sleeping behind a restaurant on the boardwalk.
The teargas cleared the beach, but we learned later that there had been a guy in a wheelchair on the beach and his wheels couldn’t move in the sand so he’d had to just sat there. Teargas isn’t fun, it’s very, very painful.
Rob, John and Lee - when the teargas hit - had been wading through the water back to our makeshift campsite holding their clothes above their heads. A massive cloud of teargas rushed towards them across the top of the water and they did the only thing they could think of. They took a deep breath and ducked under the water. The gas settled on top of the water and when they ran out of air they burst out and gulped a lungful of gas.
It’s funny in retrospect, but at the time it must have been terrifying.
We went back to Hermanus the next year because there was another big beach party. I remember sleeping on the beach that time too. I think we just figured we’d save the cost of a campsite and spend the money on beer instead.
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