Reflections in the Space Between Waves and Shadows

There's something so different about being on the ocean. The weather is raw and unfiltered, the landscape weathered and worn, and that horizon ever calling, as it called to thousands and thousands of generations before me. This coastline, its sordid history of Cook's first sightings less than 300 years ago, with Indigenous artefacts dating back 21,000 years. Five thousand years ago, these very shores were 14km further out to sea, with much of the world's water trapped in the polar ice caps during an ice age. It feels like there should be an "only"—only 5,000 years ago, this beach, these waves couldn’t even be seen on the horizon. Proof of earlier habitation may well exist under those tides right now.

Indigenous Australians have already been through an ice age or two. Our combined cultures' abrasive and painful history has been overshadowed by a global pandemic. Our environment's pain and loss have been overshadowed too. Our communities are grieving in layers upon layers, shrouding one hurt by another, more distracting one. I drive down charred roads, matchstick remains from the Black Summer bushfires. Cafés that should be working overtime on the winter school holidays are closed due to COVID. My masked reflection reads the notice in the window, and I continue riding my bike down empty streets.

I walk empty trails, swim on empty beaches, bathing in the fullness of nature. My camera and I discover insect wings, water ripples, seaweed textures, and sand glitters. I trace animal tracks and seagull footprints. My toes numb in the winter waters, my hair bleached by ocean salt. I go barefoot as often as I can, until my cold, wet toes crave the soft warmth of my heaviest woolly socks. Some days, the bush drips with morning dew and glistens in sea air, the colours subdued and the smells enhanced. Some days, the nearby estuaries reflect the sunset like glass, with flocks of ducks dragging their feet lazily through the surface as they fly towards land. The evenings close in fast, temperatures dropping and waves rising. The moon is getting fatter with each passing day, past halfway now to the next swollen saucer. I see it still up there by mid-morning. It lingers as I learn about reef invertebrates and corals that time their annual spawning with the ocean's tidal flow. The moon and the ocean, inextricably linked. I wonder if it kneads the waters in me... slowly, pushing and pulling light and moisture into my dusty shadow parts.