Published in On Our Selection News November 24, 2016

My friend and I shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions.

So it’s no secret how fantastic Daryl Braithwaite’s classic track The Horses is. It’s a magical song that can bring people together: young and old, country and city, people who wear white sunglasses and people who don’t. In fact, I firmly believe it could do America a lot of good right now.

So when my friend told me she found a tour company that takes you on a horse ride along the beach where the song’s video clip was filmed, I agreed to come along. Which translates to “I was so excited that I nearly bought a selfie stick”.

Sure, it was a long drive away, but that was fine.

And yeah, it wasn’t cheap – but it would be worth it.

This was the most exciting thing to happen to us since we dressed up to see the midnight premiere screening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – she wore a sack and paper mache ears to look like Dobby the house elf, while I wore a mustard-coloured jumpsuit and a golden snitch helmet which had the wingspan almost the length of my body (for some reason, people don’t believe we were considered cool at our school when I tell them these stories).

I went out and bought us blue jumpers so we were dressed like Daryl, and had to restrain myself from dropping $50 on beige pants to complete the look. I walked around a discount menswear store with pictures of Daryl on my phone, glancing at it every now and again for reference just to make sure I bought the right shade of blue.

I slept on a lounge room floor so we could hit the road early the next morning.

I got up at 6am on a Saturday after a week of long hours.

I even battled Sydney traffic in a car that had the tendency to bunny hop for no reason just to get us there.

Roughly three hours later, we rolled up at the beach wearing matching blue jumpers, joggers and jeans. We looked like utter dipsticks. Appropriately-dressed local beach goers glanced at us with a mixture of confusion and pity. We thought this might have been because this sort of thing happens all the time. Because, being such an historic location, many would pilgrimage to this spot for the same purpose as ours: to recreate the famed clip for admiration on social media. “They’re probably tired of this,” I thought as I played the clip, looking for the same landmarks on the screen in my surrounds.

But something didn’t add up.

When I compared the beach on my phone to the one in front of me, there were no alignments.

We looked at the tour company’s website, scouring for the Braithwaite connection and couldn’t find it.  Apparently my friend had misinterpreted a recommendation from a travel website.

Daryl, as far as we knew, had never been there.

It was a huge blow.

We were tired, poor and dressed like absolute douchebags three hours away from home.

I’m trying to find a moral of this story, but I don’t think anyone who would find herself in such a pathetic position is capable of thinking of one.