I’m staring up at this precious night sky and I wish on a shooting star that the algal bloom will go away. When I look a little harder, I see it’s not a shooting star, but one of Musk’s Starlink Satellites.
Ten years old, I was standing on a rock out to shore singing a made-up song about islands. Water washing up to my feet, my hair wet and dreaded around my shoulders. I lived in that ocean, in the throws and tides, salty and sandy and wrapped in a towel. Even then, I was creating art about the waves. I was singing that song because I loved where I was. There was a perfect sunset over slow-moving waves, with soft, dry sand, precious clouds above soaring birds, and an endless, exquisite horizon.
Nowadays, the water is thick, soupy, and angry. You can smell the toxin before you can see the beach. I’ve sat on mosaic benches at the edges of cliffs for hours, watching the algae float at the surface of each wave. I can see the bloom’s perfect structure, shifting and growing just below the surface. The sand is covered in warm foam, surrounded by dead fish along the coast. I keep watching it, so badly it hurts, and I’m looking at my mother earth and asking, “What did they do to you?” Begging, “How can I help you?” But it’s not up to me, a year 10 student from Thebarton, a hobby writer, a Narungga girl who’s watching the algal bloom wrecking the beaches of her banggara hours away. The people who are ruining our ecosystems won’t be alive to see them collapse. But I know I will.
I write this for the ocean that has guided me for all my life, that holds my soul so delicately, that fed my ancestors so generously, because I don’t know what else to do. What can the powerless do? What can the children do? And I still visit the beaches, and people ask me, “Why would you want to go when it’s like that?” and I think of when my pop was in palliative care, years ago. We sit with our loved ones and hold their hands when they’re sick, we give them our stuffed toys to comfort them, we keep the light behind our eyes so they remember to, too. So, I sit with this aching ocean. I count the waves and keep away from the foam. I stay close enough to feel this body again, but I stay far enough away that I don’t start to cough.
When I was 16 I met a dead ray on one of my trips. She was about the size of my arm, and had a long, straight tail. I sat with her and counted the beautiful stripes on her back, I ran my finger along her smooth skin. She was completely dry, completely still, and so heavy on the gasping sand. My heart rested heavy in my chest. I don’t know how long I sat with her; I didn’t want to leave. Eventually someone dragged me away. I think if she’d found me floating in the water she would have stayed with me, too. This is what we do when we care.
I was six when my family and I met 200 people at the beach one morning for Greenpeace. We all stood in a line and held hands in front of the water, a protest against oil drilling in Mirning country along the Bight. I had bare feet, my hair was frizzy in the salty air, and we all promised we’d protect the waters. We gripped hands so tightly that day, we were all such strangers to one another and still, we clutched onto each other like lifelines. We told the waves, “We’ve got you, we’re on your side, we’ll look after you.” I don’t know what to say to the ocean now because we didn’t manage to protect it; we didn’t do enough. Maybe we couldn’t have ever done enough. I think all I could say is “We’re sorry.”
Fifteen years old, I was at Brighton beach with my best friends, standing hip-height in the water and throwing a ball back and forth. The sky was empty of clouds, a perfect blue, the water crystal clear and shimmering. We’d taken the rickety train on the Seaford line, ate salami sandwiches, and carved words in the sand that’d be washed away by moonlight. Watching the others throwing and catching, something suddenly came out under my foot and gripped its sharp claws around my toes before I jolted away, screaming. “There’s crabs!” I yelled out to them all, floating now, while they laughed loudly. I angrily cursed out the ocean, ashamedly, and all the damned Brighton Crabs. Looking back on it now, I’d do anything to be there again. I’d get pinched by thousands of crabs. I’d sleep in a tank of crustaceans if it meant I could have that crystal clear water again. My memory often swims back to that day.
