The Hallowed Heart of a Nation – Australia’s beach culture

A memory: age about 25 or 26. Living in Australia’s far northwest. Working in the only hotel in a tiny isolated iron ore mining town. Along with a group of friends driving an hour through the desert to Millstream Tavern – even more isolated but existing because of the water, a natural oasis in a dry orange-red land. Swimming. Swinging ourselves into the water with a long rope dangling from a tree. Sitting by the water talking, laughing, drinking. Joe, the wild Mexican, shouting Riba! Riba!

Another memory: another tiny isolated iron ore mining town. Christmas day. All the hotel staff pack eskys (coolers) full of food, and a keg, an entire hotel-size keg of beer, and drive to a river in a cool canyon in the red desert, and we haul all our stuff, including the keg, down into the canyon, and spend the day there. By the water.

The people of this huge dry continent, the driest continent, subject to years-long droughts, and raging floods that treat cars as play things, have a convoluted connection to water. It is everywhere. It is nowhere. Even people who live in the arid centre or in the thousands of kilometres of the western desert know where the water holes are – the deep canyons found in the desert with ice cold water at the bottom.

And then there’s the coast that defines the nation. 60,000 kilometres (37,280 miles) of coastline. Nearly 12,000 beaches. 85% of Australians live within one hour of the beaches that ring this island continent. The nation is literally defined and constrained by access to coastal water, to safe protected bay beaches, to raging surf beaches, to long empty stretches of golden sand.

To be clear, when I talk about a beach I mean something that looks like this:

or this:

or this:

When summer comes almost everyone has about six weeks to play. The question flies around: Where are you going for the hols? The question’s unspoken implication is which beach?

Australia always has been a largely egalitarian society, and this is never truer than at the beach. For Australians the beach is the symbol of freedom and independence. No one cares who you are or what you look like, there’s no judgement, or discrimination on the basis of age, or race, or religion, or what your body looks like. There’s just play;

















and relaxation;

camping out for the day;







and dawdling and gabbing at the water’s edge;




swimming and surfing;

building sand castles, and boogie boarding;

skimboarding;




hurling yourself off the bridge;













hurling yourself into the surf;










or simply sitting watching the waves arrive and recede. The beach doesn’t care about you or your worries. It just does what it always does, soothing in its ceaseless rhythm of in and out. There’s no better place than a beach to quiet a troubled mind.

Children are introduced young to the joys of the beach,










and just about everyone in this multicultural society finds a way to enjoy the water.

For most Australians the beach is filled with childhood memories; it’s often the place of first teenage crushes and rites of passage; many older Australians retire there, and have their ashes scattered into the surf; marriages, birthdays, and all kinds of celebrations take place at the beach.

To a large extent the culture of a country is shaped by the environment. Canadians and Scandinavians learn about ice and snow, skating and skiing and snowshoeing the same way that Australians learn about the beach and water, swimming and surfing and jumping off cliffs into deep pools. With little history, and most Australians caring little for history anyway, the beach is in large part the glue that binds the country together, and is probably the most potent defining principle of the national psyche: freedom and independence and she’ll-be-right-mate and no-worries. Whatever else is happening there’s always the beach.

I remember being absolutely stunned when I learned that in other countries people could own the beach. We’re not allowed to swim there? We have to pay? That can’t be right! How can you own a beach? To an Aussie owning a beach feels as if the world has somehow shifted off its axis, like something has gone terribly wrong. Beaches belong to everyone!

It’s February 2023. School hols are over, and everyone’s gone back to work. The beaches are mostly empty by the time we drive the two hours from Canberra to Batemans Bay, the gateway to Canberra’s beaches. It was unthinkable that we would go to Australia to visit family and not spend time at the beach.

From Batemans Bay, go 50 kilometres along the coast in either direction and you’ll find about 140 sand beaches. They range in size from tiny unnamed coves of a hundred metres or less to the 2.5 kilometres of Long Beach. We’ve rented a house in Malua Bay, me and Don and my three sisters and brother-in-law. The house is a five minute walk from the beach, a 500 metre stretch of golden sand and rolling waves. It’s the first good surf beach you come to after heading south from Batemans Bay.





We’re at the beach for part of every day, except for the days we drive ten minutes to Broulee Beach. It’s here that Candlagen Creek empties into the sea forming a calm lagoon.





And it’s here that the kids hurl themselves off the road bridge above, and learn all kinds of water activities in calm water.





Just on the other side of the creek is the glorious two kilometres of Broulee Beach. It’s mostly quiet when we are there, but on the weekend the crowds arrive from Canberra giving some idea of what it’s like at the height of the summer season.








There’s a dichotomy about Australian beaches. They are held within the collective psyche almost as sacred, and yet they are probably the most hedonistic places in the country. They can be dangerous, but not dangerous enough to hold us back; their siren call can’t be ignored. We’ll be careful we say. We’ll swim between the flags, and lookout for rips. We care more about what the sea can give us than what it can take, in an instant.

Another memory: I’m about 15. I’m at the beach with a couple of friends. The details are hazy, but this is clear – me and a girlfriend are watching our friend surf. One of us sees a shark fin. Or thinks it’s a shark fin; with the heaving up and down of the waves it’s hard to tell. But what if it is?! We start screaming. And screaming. And screaming. On and on, trying to get his attention above the noise of the sea. There’s no one else around; we’re alone on a deserted beach; there’s nothing else we can do. An eternity goes by; we’re growing hoarse. Then suddenly he hears us and comes in. And the shark, if there was one, has gone.

Malua Bay is the headquarters of the Batemans Bay Surf Lifesaving Club. There’s a shark alarm there. During the season there are lifesavers on the lookout who sound the alarm as necessary. There’s also drone surveillance all summer provided by Surf Life Saving NSW whereby operators are able to spot potentially dangerous sharks.

Plus there’s this: There are 305 SMART (Shark-Management-Alert-In-Real-Time) drumlines along the NSW coast (and a dozen or so in Western Australia and Queensland) that are set every morning (weather dependent) and collected before sunset. The drumlines catch actively feeding sharks using bait. When a shark is caught SMART contractors receive an alert. They then respond to tag and release the shark around one kilometre offshore. Tagged sharks can then be detected by listening stations across the NSW coastline when they swim within 500 m of the unit. Between Batemans Bay and South Broulee beach, a distance of 22 kilometres, and with eight popular beaches, there are fifteen drumlines, and two drones patrolling the area.

I’ll just say that again: eight good beaches in only 22 kilometres.

But really, sharks are not that big a problem. In the last fifty years, there have been only sixty deaths from shark attacks. There are two to three deaths every year from bee stings. But sometimes the fear is real.

Rips are a greater danger than sharks. All that water coming in has to go somewhere, and being water it falls into the lowest parts of the terrain creating a channel, and flows out to sea from there. Getting caught in a rip can kill you because a rip will pull you out with such speed and power that even the strongest swimmer can’t fight it. There are two rips at Malua Beach, and about thirty rescues each year. If you find yourself in a rip or in trouble in the water, hold one hand up in the air. This is the signal for the lifies to come and help. Splashing around won’t get their attention as quickly.

But ultimately none of these dangers matter. Australia’s love affair with the beach endures because the elemental sensuality of the surf, of water, and its ability to calm and renew will always be worth it.

You can find all Australia at the beach – in the multi-generational families having picnics, the slender barely-clad teenagers, the wetsuit-clad surfers of all ages, hijabbed women having a conversation while up to their hips in the surf,





mum and dad and the kids on holidays (because the beach is where all holidays happen!),





visiting Sikhs with their local guide,





sunburnt people and fully-clothed people, parents teaching the nippers how to swim before they can even tie their laces, the beer-bellied middle-aged man and his missus under an open-sided dome tent, shirtless teenagers drinking beers and kicking a ball around. The beach, at the literal edge of the country, is Australia’s transcendent heart, a numinous place in a nation of down-to-earth prosaic people.

We come from water. Our cells are 70% water, and when the body is immersed in water the cells remember. Being in water is the closest we can get to home. And for most Aussies that’s what the beach is. Home.











Batemans Bay, Malua Bay, and Broulee Beach are all situated on what was and always will be Aboriginal land; the land of the Yuin Nation.




Next post: I can hear all you dog-lovers asking Where are the dogs? Coming up – a photo essay of dogs at the beach. And after that Surf Life Saving Australia – the biggest volunteer organization in the world, followed by: Surfers! A photo essay.






All words and images by Alison Louise Armstrong unless otherwise noted
© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2024.