It was violent and it was beautiful
Road tripping this weekend with Deanna to Wilsons Prom despite the weekend weather coming straight from the middle of winter instead of autumn was still a good idea. We were planning to see the Big Drift but the rain and the cold had other ideas. Much driving, much walking, many kangaroos and the most beautiful bays and headlands I have seen in a good long while.
It struck me when we climbed to the top of a rocky outcrop that I was on the edge of Australia. Don't get me wrong, I have been to the edge many times, on many beaches both bay and oceanic, but this was different. This was no contrived meeting between civilisation and nature. It was wild and untamed. It was Australia as it was originally, this was my country (or at least this part of it) in it’s natural state and it was mesmerising.
Not the cold, the rain, the wind, nor the lack of winter clothing could stop us. We climbed, squeezing between bushes, seeking secure footings and gasping at the beauty of the scene in which we found ourselves. Behind us the forests and mountains raced back as far as the eye could see and before us the ocean whipped up by the wind sent wave upon wave crashing against the the rocks on which we stood. The pristine beaches behind us in the bays, the flora and fauna, the rocks that had been standing guard and holding the shape of this land for millennia, the dramatic landscape was breathtaking.
So there I stood, on the edge of Australia, mesmerised. Bass Strait lay before me, wild and windy, stormy and bitterly cold. There I stood on the massive rocks, smoothed from centuries of rain and wind. There I stood dressed only in a t-shirt and jeans in the freezing biting cold (the apparent temperature was 5.4 degrees celsius). There I stood, sharp pains in my ears, tears streaming from eyes and unable to remain still in my continuous battle with winds that were gusting at 65k/ph. There I stood, on the edge of Australia wrapped in natures thrall and wishing I could stay forever.
