Australia’s Coastline: ‘A National Church’

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/world/australia/coastline-360-video-series.html

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Australia’s coastline has forever played a vital role in the life and mind of this country, and over the coming months, The New York Times will explore its sands and seas with a series of 360-degree videos.

We start this week when we roll out our expanded coverage of Australia and the region, with the video above that captures the Bold and Beautiful Swim Squad of Manly Beach, outside Sydney. It’s a colorful ad hoc club engaged in a daily ritual: At 7 a.m., seven days a week, the group gathers, puts on pink caps and swims to Shelly Beach and back, 750 meters each way, almost a mile in all.

The swimmers reflect a reality of Australian life: The beach is the country’s backyard.

The vast majority of Australia’s 24 million people live within a short drive of the sea, making everyday activities of swimming, fishing, surfing, learning about the risks of the ocean and even how to save lives. On many Sundays, writes the author Robert Drewe, the beach is essentially a national church, the place where families seek peace.

And yet, Australia’s long coastline of 25,760 kilometers, or about 16,000 miles, is very much a mystery, rich in untouched areas and in frequent surprises. With its sharks and currents, it is both friend and foe — a rapidly changing one at that. Erosion is constantly reshaping the land. Climate change is killing wide sections of the Great Barrier Reef, and rising seas are threatening important historical locations.

For our series, we hope to bring viewers a range of ocean experiences. We would love to hear from our readers about areas of Australia’s coast that you love or worry about the most. If you have a suggestion for an Australian coastal locale for us to visit, revisit or show off through a 360-degree video, email us at nytaustralia@nytimes.com. Please put “360” in the subject line.

Here’s a quote from Tim Winton’s memoir “Land’s Edge” for inspiration and guidance: “Because we have much more landscape and coastline than people, our shores and shallows are still rich in life, diversity, and strangeness.”