And though I've lived to be an old man with my very own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

Every great moment of social change was once a confirmed impossibility. People's determination in the face of overwhelming odds has, time and again, triumphed over what seems impossible. This is what you tell yourself.

It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.

Somewhere a bicycle bell rings. Somewhere else there's a war on. Somewhere else people turn to shadows and powder in an instant and the streets turn to funnels and light the sky with their burning. Somewhere a war is over.

I can't make something 'useful' to me in a writing sense for a very long time. I don't have any journalistic instinct. And I do keep a journal, but it's neither very revealing nor fruitful for work. Stuff just bubbles up from the swamp later.

The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.

Yet however comforting and peaceful beach-combing is, it ends up like the sea, as disturbing as it is reassuring. In dark moments I believe that walking on a beach at low tide is to be looking for death, or at least anticipating it. You will only find the dead, the spilled and the cast-off. Things torn free of their life or their place.