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.

Nothing is as daunting as the threats associated with global warming. That's the biggie. Everyone bangs on about rising sea levels but the real challenge of a warming planet is ocean acidification. An acid ocean spells the end of life on earth.

When you're surfing you're not thinking about where you parked the car or what you're going to do when you grow up or what you're going to buy when you've got lots of money. You know, you're just there. You're in the moment. And I think in a contemporary world, that's a rare privilege.

We are all part of that global traffic and I think that the effort to make yourself understood and to be not a problem for anyone or to hide your own particuarly is a mistake. I think people will and do value individuality.

People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.

Australia was once a leader in taking global warming seriously. The former PM [Kevin Rudd] called it 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. But in the past couple of years the national consensus has been eroded and Australians are being encouraged by the polluters and their mates in Parliament to forget it was ever mentioned. It's heartbreaking.

In fiction 'issues' are accidental, sometimes incidental. The place and the people it creates are paramount.