For years, Martin’s life revolved around the freeway.
Every morning, before the sun reached the bay, he’d climb into his car in Safety Beach, coffee in hand, and start the long crawl toward Richmond. Ninety kilometres of highway, brake lights, and radio chatter. Then the same road home again at night.
What started as a temporary commute had quietly become his life. The hours blurred together — podcasts, missed calls, takeaway dinners reheated after the kids were in bed. He told himself it was worth it. The pay was good. The company name looked great on a résumé. And besides, he could always make it up to his family on the weekend.
Except weekends kept shrinking, swallowed by exhaustion.
His wife, Anna, had stopped waiting up for him. The kids had started telling stories at dinner that began with, “Mum, guess what…” instead of “Mum, Dad, guess what…” And still, every morning, he’d get back in the car.
That Thursday night, the office lights had flickered off around him one by one. He was the last to leave — again. A product launch, endless revisions, client calls that stretched past dinner. By the time he hit the Monash Freeway, it was close to 10 p.m.
The roads were quiet, the hum of tyres almost hypnotic. He rolled the window down for air, the salt smell faint even this far inland. His eyes burned. He blinked hard, forcing focus. The car’s headlights carved two narrow tunnels through the darkness.
He remembered thinking, I’ll grab a pie from the servo in Mount Martha. Just a few more minutes.
Then everything went white.
The sound came first — the horrible crunch of metal against something unmovable. The jolt snapped his neck forward. The airbag exploded in his face. When the car finally stopped, there was silence except for the tick of the hazard lights.
Martin sat there, frozen, staring at the steering wheel. His chest hurt. His hands shook. He could smell smoke — or maybe burnt rubber. Slowly, he realised where he was. His car had left the road and ploughed through the low brick fence of someone’s property, skidding up their concrete driveway before smashing into the front porch.
Lights flicked on inside the house.
“Oh my god,” he muttered, scrambling for the door handle. “Oh no, no, no.”
He stumbled out into the cold air, knees weak. The front door opened, and an elderly couple appeared, looking understandably shocked.
“Are you alright?” the man shouted.
“I’m— I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?” Martin stammered. “I don’t even— I must’ve dozed off. Is everyone okay?”
The woman nodded, eyes wide but calm. “You could have killed us, but we’re fine.”
They called the police, and then an ambulance, just in case. Martin sat on the curb, wrapped in a blanket one of the neighbours had fetched. His car was crumpled into the porch post. The front door hung off its hinge. No one was hurt, but the damage was undeniable.
When Anna arrived, she didn’t speak right away. She just knelt beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. The flashing lights from the police cars painted their faces blue and red.
He couldn’t stop repeating it. “It could’ve been worse. I could’ve— I could’ve killed someone.”
But what haunted him most wasn’t fear. It was the thought that if he’d died that night, he’d have left behind a wife and kids who hardly saw him anymore — all for a job that didn’t even feel like his.
In the days that followed, everyone told him how lucky he was. Lucky he’d walked away. Lucky no one had been hurt. Lucky it was just a car.
But Martin didn’t feel lucky. He felt raw. Awake.
The morning after the crash, sitting in his quiet kitchen, he noticed the way sunlight poured through the window and hit the coffee mug his daughter had painted for him — the one he never used because he was always rushing.
He called his boss that afternoon.
“Martin, take a few days off,” his manager said. “We’ll sort things out when you’re back.”
“No,” Martin said. “I’m not coming back.”
There was silence. Then, “You’re serious?”
“Dead serious.”
And he was.
That week, he filed the paperwork, cleaned out his desk, and spent long afternoons walking along Safety Beach while the kids were at school. For the first time in years, he listened to the sound of the water and realised how much he’d been missing it.
He’d always surfed on weekends when he could — taught a few mates’ kids to paddle and stand — but it had been years since he’d really let himself enjoy it. One morning, board under his arm, he paddled out just past the break. The ocean felt cold and alive against his skin. He floated there, watching the horizon glow gold, and felt something settle inside him.
That’s when it clicked.
He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life chasing deadlines and pretending the view from the freeway was enough. He wanted to build something slower, something real — something that let him share the thing that made him feel most alive. A surfing school!
It started small — weekend lessons for locals, beginners’ boards stacked in the garage, a secondhand van with a hand-painted logo. But word spread quickly. Soon he was teaching school groups, tourists, and retirees who’d always wanted to try. Best of all, there was hardly any need to leave the peninsula!
He wasn’t making tech-company money, not even close. But he was home for dinner. He was there for school drop-offs, for sunsets, for birthday breakfasts. His kids helped wash the boards and hand out flyers on the foreshore. Surfing on the Mornington Peninsula became a job and a way of life for Tim.
Sometimes he drove past that house near Mount Martha — they rebuilt porch and fresh paint. The owners had planted new roses along the driveway.
Every time he passed, he slowed down, heart heavy and grateful all at once. That crash had nearly broken him — but in the wreckage, he’d finally found his wave.
