I am in awe. I did not know my country was this beautiful.

I have been given a tip to check out another, little, out of the way camping ground by a beautiful estuary. It is almost unfathomably gorgeous, pristine bush, but a good two kilometre walk to the beach. More a fishing spot than a surfing spot to be honest. But it was a 45 minute drive in here on a winding, bumpy, dirt road, the kids are happy, have quickly found new playmates, and our neighbours are a friendly bunch. They say your kids pick your friends and so it goes.

But I struggle with my new reality. It is a 30 minute round trip walking through the bush to see what the ocean is doing. At the eastern end of the beach a large fur seal colony inhabits two rocky offshore islands a short distance outside the mouth of the estuary.

And we all know who the fur seals main natural predator is. It is a spectacular sweep of beach but I do not imagine I will do any surfing here, without even a surf companion to shorten the odds.

Even a small chomp and you would bleed to death before they even lugged you up to the camp ground. I write the place off as too sharky, too remote, too … wild. I have just failed my first solo, soul surf adventurer test. If I was Wayne Lynch, I’d probably have never left the joint.

And I am thus confronted with the limitations of my own bravery. I had fancied myself as the bold wave hunter, scouring the vast Australian coast for remote unridden waves to discover. I quickly realize this coast is too wild for me. Our first morning here I walk the track to the beach at a pace, eager to see what the surf is doing.

I am confronted by huge wild, windswept close outs from one end of the beach to the other – perhaps 10 feet but without any scale it is impossible to tell. It is a classic collection of “almost” waves, whipped by a raging sideshore westerly. At the western end, there is almost a right hand point break, pitching and barrelling on almost dry rock off the end of the headland, then quickly filling up into a fat useless shoulder. Another section unloads on reef halfway along the point and turns into an ugly close out on a dry rock ledge. All the way along this stunning headland, like a cold water Noosa, it does this infuriating dance. It is dry or it is fat, and none of the perfect geometry in between required by boardriders.

On the beachbreaks, the odd one reels and spits, about one makeable barrel for every 10 death close outs. The odds are not inspiring. It is a slightly maddening predicament, not knowing this coast, a one and a half hour round trip just to drive out of here and check anywhere else, or a major hike of indeterminate length over the next headland to see if the next bay might house a rideable wave.

I decide to let it go, just soak up the wildness of it all and forget about chasing a surf for the day. There is a sweet relief in this decision, just to be with the family, wander the beach, marvel at the might and scale of nature, watch the seals swimming and surfing and diving in the mouth of the inlet. An occasional reform left hander breaks across the sandbar like a mini-Mundaka, tubing and spitting for a hundred metres or so with only one playful seal to ride it and I am afraid I want nothing to do with it. A thousand or more fur seals sit on the rocks just beyond the sand bar and I watch the lone seal at play in the surf, just waiting for a massive pair of jaws to explode from the water and bite it in two. It doesn’t happen.

But there are fresh oysters to pick off the rocks, fresh mussels to dive for, and abundant fish for the anglers among our fellow campers and I realize they have found their own Nirvana. And I ponder what a limited view of the coast and the ocean we surfers sometimes have, assessing it purely for the existence of an evenly peeling wave that might lend itself to riding.

For today, my boards remain dry and I try and be at peace with my predicament. But that uneasy equilibrium only lasts a day and when the swell is just as big and as clean as a whistle the next day, steps must be taken. But that is another story.