This is What You’re Missing Out on by Staying on The Coast

I love the ocean. 

Floating on my back and gently drifting over unbroken waves is my moment of meditation. I spent a whole summer attempting to dip my body in that salty sanctuary every single day. For two years I fell asleep to the crashing of waves and woke to the vision of an empty beach from my very bed. 

Bellambi ocean pool at sunrise

I’ve spent summer holidays hot-footing it across black bitumen and scorching sand just to dive headfirst into a breaking wave and feel the tug of the swell as it pulls me back towards shore. 

How lucky I’ve been to have the ocean as my backyard and happy place for so many years. Positively spoilt. 

So when I say you should stray away from the coast, I don’t mean it with any dismissive sentiment or snide.

Australia is blessed with its coastline. All 35,000km of it. Nowhere else in the world has beaches comparable to ours. But for all the identity and pastimes our coastline grants us, there are countless landscapes, life, and greater understanding of what it is to be Australian, waiting to be found beyond where the sea breeze blows. 

It’s difficult to gain a firm grasp on the enormity of Australia while you’re teetering on its fringes. Only once you sit behind a steering wheel and fling yourself across flat, dry plains that seem to never break, just to realise you’ve moved little more than half an inch on a map, do you start to get a sense of the size of this land. 

By sticking to the ocean, never venturing beyond its white, foamy fingertips, you miss out on knowing most of Australia. 

Its red dirt, its endless expanse, and the people who make this their home. 

Its country towns with wide streets and no traffic to fill them. Its bakeries and pubs and general stores. One of each in every town. 

Its hillsides shining golden with canola and fields of wildflowers in full bloom come spring. 

Its freshwater gorges and piping hot bore baths. 

Its mountains that spring up out of the flatness, providing a perch to take in the flush surroundings from above.

Its volcanic peaks and empty salt lakes and streams gurgling along.

Its dusty dirt roads and golden sunsets and rocks of every shape, size, and colour.

Its crisp alpine lakes and dewy, leech-prone rainforests. And the sky, oh that big open sky. 

Sunset over Mundi Mundi Plains, NSW

By staying on the coast, it’s not just different landscapes and views you’re missing. It’s new people, new perspectives, and a more well-rounded understanding of this land and how it shapes us as a collective. 

The harshness of a lot of it, and softness of some. The paradises dotted between coastlines, conventional or homemade.

Mostly, it’s the awe that one land can hold so much diversity within its clutches, so much life where seemingly there is nothing and so much beauty where seemingly there is no one around to witness it.

That’s what you’re missing, by staying on the coast.

Lake William Hovel, VIC