Beach Walker: Chapter 17
She’ll Be Right
Having accepted the challenge, Leonard seemed nonchalant about giving a talk at the Festival of the Sea in Barwon Heads.
‘Ah, she’ll be right,’ was his only comment, when I asked him about it. ‘Not the first paper I’ve given.’
Barwon Heads is more constrained by geography than its sister town Ocean Grove on the other, eastern bank of the Barwon, and so retains something of its original seaside village charm — a very well-to-do, gentrified village nowadays.
It stands on a peninsula-off-a-peninsula. The river curls around it, forming great, marshy lakes to the west and north, mangrove flats to the east, as it snakes toward the sea. To the south, the high coast crumbles into stormy Bass Strait. The township huddles in the dip of low land behind the cliffs — which may be an archipelago rather than a peninsula by the year 2100, who knows?
Unsurprising, then, if its residents are more environmentally aware and interested in matters watery than the average Victorian. They have skin in the game.
My friend had settled on the Sunday morning timeslot. I was slightly concerned by his reference to ‘giving a paper’.
‘I hope you won’t make it too scientific. Remember it’s for a general audience — dunces like me.’
