On Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is a beach, my memories of which I guard closely. They return to me from time to time, whether I’m drifting off to sleep or tootling along a highway. As a child, I went to this beach often. Just me, my mum and dad, my brothers and sisters. In university, a lecturer asked my class to write about ‘the landscape of our dreaming’. Descriptions of this beach filled the page before me. I have never been able to define why this humble stretch of southern Victorian coastline speaks to me and my childhood so vividly… but it does.
This beach is known as the Sorrento Back Beach. Sorrento itself sits, almost lazily, between Rosebud and Portsea. If you wish to take a ferry ride across Port Phillip Bay, Sorrento is your jumping-off point.
Restaurants, cafes, craft stores and art galleries line the main street. Sorrento offers that quintessential laidback holiday vibe, essentially during summer. With breathtaking foreshore camping offered on the Port Phillip side of Sorrento and the Back Beach on the other, the town is sandwiched by salt water – the glass of the bay at one end, rough and tumbling waves and high sand dunes and cliffs at the other.
I hadn’t been to Sorrento Back Beach in almost 10 years when Avida offered me the use of its new Sprinter-based Explorer LX off-grid campervan. I decided to use the opportunity to reconnect with the Mornington Peninsula, the stomping ground of my youth. The beauty of the Avida, as opposed to a much longer towing combination, was that I could head wherever I wanted, minus the need to plan ‘escape routes’ or avoid busy car parks. It was, in truth, the perfect vehicle for the trip.
MEMORIES
The Sorrento Back Beach isn’t hard to find. Signs point the way. A short stretch of road after the main street will lead you to a view that will forever live in my memory, a vista of dunes and ocean and a swimming area that had once been blocked from the fury of the ocean by a concrete seawall that has long since eroded.
When I was a lad, that swimming area – separated from the ocean by a long hill of concrete – was my place. It’s where I wanted to be during summer. When I was about seven, I was splashing about when suddenly, a toddler appeared beside me, in over his head and going under. My little arms immediately scooped this even littler body to safety, just as the toddler’s father bounded hell for leather into the water to perform his own rescue.
That same swimming area was home to a rocky platform in the centre, full of marine life and seaweed. I have no doubt the area was home to stonefish and blue-ringed octopuses too, but in this, the landscape of my dreaming, such deadly creatures were mere trifles – nothing for a young boy to concern himself with.
A tall rock stood at the deeper end. The older kids would use it as a platform from which to cannonball into the water. I would watch as they’d have the time of their lives. My own parents didn’t let me jump, though I might have anyway when they weren’t looking.
Now and then, we would swim in the ocean, away from that barricaded swimming space. I held a yellow kickboard, a flotation device designed to help a child learn to swim. I found myself in a rip. The current was pulling me further from the shore, no matter how much my tired legs kicked or how tightly I held onto that kickboard. Then, I saw my older brother. He was wading towards me, worry scrawled on his face. Swimming over incoming waves, he reached me, grabbed the board and began to side-stroke towards shore. But he was only 10. To me, in that moment, he was a hero. But he was still just a child, and even his arms lacked the strength necessary to reach safety. And that’s when a passing surfer saw us struggling. He paddled us both to shore. I saw my mum. She had noticed the commotion and had ran to the shoreline in fear. I’ll never forget that either.
Or the time my brothers and I waded with our dad out to a sandstone stack 100m offshore. Or the time I watched a man dive into a rockpool that must’ve been 3m deep, touching the bottom each time.
If we are shaped by our memories, this beach did more to mould me than I realised until I recently returned. I’ve been thinking about it since.
ABOUT SORRENTO BACK BEACH
Sorrento Back Beach is part of the Mornington Peninsula National Park. The landscape forms a kind of amphitheater. Whether you want to fish, surf or explore sheltered rock formations, reefs and rockpools – some of which are large enough to swim in – this beach is the definition of the great outdoors.
Set out on a short walk across rocky headlands, through coastal heath, be amazed by the seemingly endless ocean vistas from Cape Schanck to Cape Otway and out across Bass Strait.
A short track leads from the surf lifesaving club to a historic lookout rotunda, providing an even better view of the encompassing blue expanse. This track is only 0.5km and only people with serious mobility issues would find it difficult. Add a 1.2km loop walk to Sphinx Rock, or venture an additional 2km east along Coppins Track to discover Jubilee Point and Diamond Bay.
During summer and the Easter period, a well as the weekends between, the Sorrento Surf Lifesaving Club patrols the beach daily. Sorrento Back Beach is a dangerous swimming beach. The rips are unpredictable, the waves large.
ACCOMMODATION
The Mornington Peninsula has no shortage of van parks and foreshore camping options. As I mentioned, the Port Phillip end of Sorrento offers an excellent campground on the beach. During my trip, I stayed at a similar campground in nearby Rosebud, the Capel Sound Foreshore Reserve. But if you’re visiting Sorrento, the town’s foreshore camping reserve is your best bet. It provides quick and easy access to the beach, all the facilities of town, and it’ll take you less than five minutes to drive to the Back Beach.
My sleeping quarters: the Avida Explorer LX. With its small bathroom, an elevated bed with storage space below and a decent amount of 12V power, I was very comfortable.
At one stage, the dash told me to fill up the vehicle’s AdBlue tank. At another, parked up in Rosebud, a shirtless man in his 60s rode past on a pushbike. He was the adventurous type – as I was taking pictures, he was doing wheelies. If I have his energy at his age, I’ll consider myself lucky. He was just one of many people who stopped to admire the Avida.
TIME AND TIDE
I suspect we all have our place, that one landscape that makes us feel different, that relaxes us, that reminds us of who we are. Sorrento Back Beach has changed over the decades. Time and tide have eroded that seawall. A classy restaurant sits where a basic kiosk sat in the 1980s. But it remains the landscape of my dreaming, the place my brain returns as I drift to sleep.
When the time came, it’s where I scattered Mum’s ashes. Time and tide eroded that seawall. It also came for my mother, and it will one day come for me. But the Back Beach was there before us. It will be there long after we’re gone.
The Back Beach is special. Take it from me.
Camping in Sorrento: https://www.mornpen.vic.gov.au/Activities/Camping/Sorrento-Foreshore-Camping
