Writing the Australian Beach

Local Site, Global Idea

Elizabeth Ellison, Donna Lee Brien, Elizabeth Ellison, Donna Lee Brien

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030352646
• Print ISBN:
  9783030352639
• Subtopic: Human Geography

Writing the Australian Beach is the first book in fifteen years to explore creative and cultural representations of this iconic landscape, and how writers and scholars have attempted to understand and depict it. Although the content chiefly focuses on Australia, the beach as both a location and idea resonates deeply with readers around the world. This edited collection includes three sections. Forms of Beach Writing examines the history of beach writing in Australia and in a number of forms: screenwriting, social media writing, and food writing. In turn, Multiplicities of Australian Beach Writing examines how forms of writing—poetry, travel writing, horror film, and memoir—engage with some specific beaches in Australia. And, finally, Reading the Beach as a Text considers how the beach itself functions in cultural narratives: how we walk the beach; the revealing story of beach soccer; and the design and use of ocean baths. Given its scope, the collection offers a unique resource for scholars of Australian culture and creative writing, and for all those interested in Australian beaches. 

Multiplicities of Australian Beach Writing

© The Author(s) 2020

E. Ellison, D. L. Brien (eds.)Writing the Australian Beachhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35264-6_6

Begin Abstract

Exploring Australian Coastal Gothic: Poetry and Place

Lynda Hawryluk¹

(1)

Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia

Lynda Hawryluk

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Introduction

The Australian coast is a site of “nervous duality” (Baldacchino 2005, 248). While a place of boundless beauty , its isolation, lack of facilities and proximity to the forces of nature creates a duality, with a potential for experiencing great terror alongside the beauty . This chapter examines the genesis and development of the Gothic coastal tradition in Australian fiction , particularly in narratives set on the islands bordering the Australian coastline . By reading the work of established Australian writers, a case will be made to show how Australian coastal Gothic fiction extends Ross Gibson’s concept of the “Australian Badlands” (2002) to the shoreline and beyond, to wild and untamed coastal spaces . A growing body of contemporary creative writing set on the Australian coast can be compared with traditional Gothic writing as, in such works, the themes, depictions of landscapes and characters seem taken straight from the pages of a classic Gothic novel, even if the sun shines more brightly and the skin tone of the inhabitants is significantly more tanned. One of the key concerns is to show how Australian coastal Gothic fiction depicts the coastal borderlands of islands and the shoreline as the “locus of our greatest fears” (Gillis 2009, 3). In this discussion, I am drawing on Ken Gelder’s influential definition of the Australian Gothic (2007) and positioning some Australian narrative texts and original prose poetry my own original prose poetry as a demonstration of Australian coastal Gothic writing in action.

To set the parameters of this exploration, it is important to determine the position of the entity called ‘the coast’, as this is the place where Australian coastal Gothic fiction is located. Scholars use the terms ‘beach’ and ‘coast ’ almost interchangeably and for the purposes of this discussion I also include the shoreline of islands . The Macquarie Dictionary determines that the ‘coast ’ is the land next to the sea (Delbridge et al. 1995, 345) and, in this way, I additionally read the coast as the region adjoining it. Elizabeth Ellison rationalises the terms ‘coast’ and ‘beach’, stating that the “beach refers to the coastline of a country” (2013, 2), and this is where the chapter takes its lead from. Even if a coastline does not determine the border of a country , it does provide a boundary between the non-coastal landscape and the ocean , and this can include the coastlines around islands . In this way, the coastline can be seen to function much like Ellison’s definition of a beach. It is in these spaces that Australian coastal Gothic fiction is set.

Australian Badlands

Ross Gibson linked the Australian landscape to the notion of unruliness in his seminal text , Seven Versions of an Australian Badlands (2002). He took his lead from the North American term “badlands ”, which is used to describe “a tract of country that would not succumb to colonial ambition” (Gibson 2002, 14); that is, land that resisted being subdued. This was wild country , or a “bad land to cross” (14). In Australia , we are subject to seemingly endless and worsening inclement weather. The effect of this is that the Australian experience of our landscape is one of a ‘bad land’, where “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson 2002, 13). Gibson begins with a description of destructive storms on the Queensland coast —and, with the Australian population hugging the coastline and in the path of cyclonic and destructive weather patterns—coastal life is fraught with danger : tropical lows flood entire cities, and cyclones can submerge whole island communities . For east coastal dwellers, blustery Northerlies provide a backdrop to daily life, while tempests and king tides conspire to inhibit the safe passage of watercraft and aircraft between the coastline and the inland.

Gibson maintains that landscapes not only induce emotive responses but also contain memories of past activities that happened in them. He writes about the Queensland coastal badlands : “there is some spirit of place here, something made by nature and culture scratching a distressed landscape together” (2002, 49). These factors combine to mark the Australian coastline as a type of, and specific, badlands (Ellison 2016). This is a place where disaster occurs, and is a space prone to, or inducing, rash behaviour. Badlands are also spaces where narrative and character are built through the repeating of mythologies and stories. In Australian literature , Gothic characteristics have been previously applied to this landscape . Australian narratives in films like Wake in Fright (Kotcheff 1971), The Cars That Ate Paris (Weir 1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir 1975), Mad Max (Miller 1979), Kiss or Kill (Bennett 1997), The Monkey’s Mask (Lang 2000), Lantana (Lawrence 2001), Dead Calm (Noyce 1989), Wolf Creek (McLean 2005) and Jindabyne (Lawrence 2006) are reflective of this in how they depict the landscape as embodying the essential elements of the Gothic : uncanny, haunted, and filled with history and memories. Recent Australian films such as The Reef (Traucki 2010), Uninhabited (Bennett 2010), Breath (Baker 2017) and Storm Boy (Seet 2019) demonstrate how the harsh Australian landscape , and particularly the coastline , can be complicit in establishing a place of lawlessness. These four films position their narratives in isolated locations on the coastline of Australia . This isolation contributes to the sense of lawlessness that is a crucial aspect of the mise en scène of the films, especially via encounters with nature ; the roiling surf (Breath), sharks (The Reef), dangerous coastlines and natural predators (Storm Boy, Uninhabited). It is as if the Gothic coast depicted conspires against the protagonists and leads them to danger and disharmony. This is also the case in Gibson’s discussion of badlands, where legal and social boundaries cease to exist. Such places are locations where recognised laws are altered or somehow non-existent.

In the badlands , it is possible to see the landscape become instilled with temperament and personality. Like the Australian bush , the character of the coastline is one of malevolence. It is contemptuous of those who seek to traverse it. In literature, the landscape is often depicted as being complicit in the destructi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Writing the Australian Beach: Texts, Sites, Events and People
• Forms of Beach Writing
• Multiplicities of Australian Beach Writing
• Reading the Beach as Text
• Back Matter