Until recently, the last time I witnessed the ocean it was obediently marching towards the stoic cliff line of North Cornwall. A showery, blustery day unsurprising in early December, as fickle and mean-spirited as the lack of warming jacket potatoes and the distribution of parking tickets. Utterly glorious but only in fleeting spells between disenchantment.

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to see the sea again. But fate and circumstance have been unpredictable allies, regularly conspiring to deliver huge volumes of rain along eastern Australia, more often than not over the course of a whole weekend. Floods, landslips, surges, maelstrom. The usual 2022 kind of stuff really.

Canberra, naturally, has been a little more protected from the onslaught, feasting its way through annual festivities towards the ambience of autumn. But there’s only so many gum trees and mountain vistas and cafes on bike rides and lake reflections one can digest before yearning for a saltier breeze. Waiting, watching, hoping for a porthole.

And finally there is a Sunday in April. A Sunday following several more days of heavy rain but a window nonetheless. A Sunday when I hotfooted it east with haste, bypassing the regulation coffee stop in Braidwood so that I could enjoy one instead on the sand. From Mossy Point down to Broulee. Regulation muffin making for a vision realised.

Broulee is always a good bet, boasting a selection of beaches and bays, aforementioned coffee (and muffin), and a diverting walk around its not quite island. Here it’s not all fine white sand and azure water, but slabs of rock, stunted scrub and seaweed lending a dose of unkempt nature to proceedings.

Indeed, with the generous gift of La Niña there is plenty of seaweed to mar those paradisiacal sands, the water a distinctly browner shade than normal from all the run off. But under blue skies today, who’s complaining?

With a spot of dawdling and reading and milling around to give the muffin at least some time to digest, I headed onto Moruya to source some fish and chips for lunch. Or fish cocktails and a potato scallop to be precise. The cocktails – all crunch outside and softness within – are to be commended, the scallop – all undercooked insipidness – to be fed to the gulls.

Still, the food was more than enough to propel me towards a post lunch lull and I had visions of fading in and out of consciousness on a sheltered bay somewhere nearby. On name alone, Lilli Pilli Beach tempted me towards it and I settled on the sand with hope, only to be distracted by a cool, funnelling breeze and pooey wafts from a stagnant creek. This motivated me to move and explore among the wonderful spotted gums above the bay.

Trying again for a final dose of utopia I pulled off the road at McKenzies Beach. This was more like it: no smells, no wind, and the rhythmic throb of surf as it meets the crescent of fine, south coast sand. And while there was no nap to be had, I sat contentedly, sun on back, reading about some lady cycling around France eating cake. There is no shame to have an escape within an escape, especially when it involves patisserie.

Back in the very present, I finished a chapter atop the Col de Joux Plane and cast imprints of my feet in the sand. Greeting the ocean and wading ankle deep. Thinking the next time they touch the sea, they may well be half a world away.