Back in December, as I was preparing for a brief island holiday, I managed to sneak in this article for The Conversation, called ‘Ten great Australian beach reads set at the beach‘. While it is by no means a definitive list, it certainly includes some that I think are really significant beach books but also ones that showcase some of the diversity of beach writing in Australia. Continue reading →

I had the pleasure of chatting again with Jonathan Green and a panel of guests on Radio National’s Blueprint for Living. The session was all about serenity, and I was alongside two other presenters based in Melbourne: one discussing the Japanese garden, and the other architectural design. You can find the download link here.

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On Friday (August 18), I ran my first ever symposium! It was a really enjoyable day, with some excellent papers and ongoing conversations about the Australian beach and what it means to us as a country, in our fiction, on our screens, and under our feet. The original call for papers can be found here.

I wanted to capture some of the day in a blog post while it is still fresh in my mind, and also acknowledge and thank the enthusiasm and generosity of all the attendees. It was a day with wide ranging levels of experience from professor level through to very early emerging scholars. Regardless, it was a collegial atmosphere and an exciting day.

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You might have heard me recently chatting with the personable and engaging Jonathan Green on Radio National’s Blueprint for Living! It was such a fun experience to be able to talk about the ‘dark side of the beach’ for a national audience.

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I have been really lucky to be a part of a new(ish) publication: Filmurbia!: screening the suburbs, edited by David Forrest, Graeme Harper, and Jonathan Rayner and released in May this year.

It’s the third volume in their Cinema and Landscape collection, a series I have followed with avid interest during my PhD studies. Therefore, it was really exciting to be able to have my work included in this book, and I must thank Jonathan for his gentle yet rigorous reviewing and editing process! My chapter is titled “The Gritty Urban: The Australian Beach as City Periphery in Cinema” – unsurprisingly, it’s continuing my interest in the Australian beach.

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