I had this dream about the coast again. Not the soft kind with dolphins and perfect waves, the kind Jamie gets jealous of as he dreams of escaping drug gangs in London (we're both products of our childhood landscapes). This dream was full of anger and tears, sheer frustration as I watched people behave badly and trample over my precious coast.

I'd probably been reading too much criticism about GORCPA - the Great Ocean Road Coast and Parks Authority. Not as people, exactly, but the bureaucratic body that makes it - rules, planning documents, decisions that shift the shape and feel of our landscapes and not always for what we believe is the better. They’ve taken over managing large stretches of the coast, with a brief that sounds pretty reasonable on paper. We can't argue with a body designed to protect, conserve, manage increasing visitation, and deal with climate impacts, particularly as the coast is now getting over crowded, and is succumbing to various pressures - increased foot traffic, population booms, tourism. It's a fragile place that needs protection. I agree with them there.

But I'm not a fan of formal development, of fencing off, of a plethora of signs ordering me to do things, even if I believe others need to be told what to do. I get the double standard, but there's a big evil part of me that thinks I've got a right to this coast and everyone else should fuck off.

I'd been reading about Point Grey at Lorne and the co-op building demolished because it’s “reached the end of its useful life,” even though people wanted it kept, and whole precinct being redeveloped with new facilities and new layouts and new toilets for tourists - everything rethought. More infrastructure for people to stay longer, use more, spend more money in a town that can't even accommodate locals and has a ton of empty houses for the rich.

On paper, it’s all improvement, but for many - and in my dream - it's a writing over what was, what we don't want to change. In the dream, it felt like the coast was being sewn up and altered and developed so that its essential essence was being removed. No longer wild, but kept, sanitised, packaged, sold, converted into something managed and polished and reshaped.

And then the Twelve Apostles, too - it used to feel so wild. You’d pull up, walk out, and there it was - wind, cliff edge, ocean doing its own thing, like we had nothing to do with any of it. Now it’s all pathways, railings, designated lookouts, timed movement, pay for parking, helicopters, buses. That stretch of coast isn't for stumbling upon anymore - it's for being guided through with the masses, taking selfies. Safer, maybe. Less danger to the environment. But there's something lost from it - and I won't ever visit again in my lifetime, because I want my memory of it intact as this wild, beautiful place.

And in my dream, I was imagining the second carpark at Johanna where we used to camp and sleep in the back of the car in the carpark listening to the huge waves break on massive beaches, and I dreamt that it was all paved and fenced off so you couldn't do a sneaky overnighter because you didn't have the cash for it, and that there was a huge playground in the dunes as if children must only have structured play and not dig holes in the sand and run down sanddunes and go fishing, and there was litter everywhere, and some huge fucking restaurant overlooking the beach and spoiling the view (because, tourists) and there was no authority to regulate any of it properly, because there was no funding left for that, and there were dogs everywhere chasing down the hooded plover chicks that are endangered and so precious and I was crying.

I thought of it all as I was walking on this beach, only minutes from home. It's less populated than most as it's less safe for swimming, but there's surfers and walkers and dogs. I like it better in winter, but today it's nice and clean and hot and bright and beautiful - a little bit of swell, though I can't surf coz of my elbow injury.

I pick up a few bits of rubbish that have floated in on the tide - bottle caps, a dog lead. Aussie beaches are generally clean, and we tend to pick up other people's mess and get angry about it.

I knock down a rock stack - I hate people leaving evidence of their passing, because I want the illusion of wildness. People think they’re harmless, even respectful, little temples to the sea. But they’re not. You move those rocks and you’re pulling apart microhabitats of bugs, moisture pockets, tiny systems that survive because they’re left alone. It’s interference disguised as mindfulness and I always, always kick them down.

And I thought about the dogs and the hooded plovers, those small, almost invisible birds that nest right there on the sand that are already struggling and protected for a reason. I've literally seen, in real life, people letting dogs run straight through them like a leash and a bit of awareness is a rare thing for other people. Before long they won't even exist - they'll become a dream. Ghost plovers, like ghost koalas and ghost black cockatoos.

I feel for the little birds, nesting right in the open, scraping out the smallest, most vulnerable little hollows in the sand, endangered and exposed, in dreams and in real life being chased, neck crushed. Sometimes it's hard to separate the anxiety of dreams and the anxiety of real life. I'm always so protective of this coast.

Perhaps it's because I love this place in a way that isn’t neat and structured and signposted - it's a love that's weathered by wind and waves and sun and formed into something so precious I can't even explain it adequately.

I know we need bodies like GORCPA to protect it, but I find it so hard not to be resentful, worried at how things are changing - not just in this pocket of wildness, but around the world, where wildness is thinning, smoothed, sold, packaged, given up for other versions that are based on capitalism and self interest.

GORCPA isn’t wrong to step in. The coast does need protection. There are too many people, too much pressure, too many small careless acts adding up - I get it. Authorities trying to protect the coast from people
while also reshaping it to accommodate them.

But this uncomfortable truth sitting in the middle of it all of this - I'm part of the problem too. I live here, make an impact here, like anyone else. My footprints are also on the sand, even as I mourn what's changed, what's changing, what will be lost.

And then, on the return to the carpark, there they are - four little plovers, darting along the shore, and I'm lost in pure joy.

With Love,

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