Gary,
I agree with you on identity and beach cultures.

The thing I found interesting about Coast Dwellers was that while we're gazing outward, we also have our backs to something. If the whole nation walked backwards until we collided would we all end up at Uluru?

Lyn,
it's the hills, or the ranges. You have to cross them to get to the desert or centre.

Pam,
What are the cultural differences between Americans and Australians that made American pioneers climb every hill or range they found to settle on the other side until the west coast stopped them, while Australians kind of shrugged their shoulders, said 'too hard' and went to the beach?

I'm glad we did, but find it interesting that while we were building the 'defeated by the interior' mythology, the Americans were building Las Vegas.

Lyn
try manifest destiny.

Port Elliot is great place for a lunchtime stop which we have done many times. After 4 years in Katherine we yearned to live by the sea so when we looked for a community school Maningrida was a great choice. There was even a tiny view of the water from our back verandah which turned into multiple views after Cyclone Monica in 2006.
Our current home Broome has two special places among many. The vast expanses of Cable Beach and the more intimate Town Beach. The Dampier Peninsula has many extraordinary beachscapes such as Middle Lagoon which is a little known gem.
Yet the coast is only a small part of our identity. I was shocked a few years ago when my neices and newphews had never heard of the Birdsville track. Deserts and horse racing must be quintessentially Australian.

Gary,
Of course, manifest destiny. Due to strong religious cultural roots and systematic rejection of the old world.

aah manifest destiny. America’s “goodness,” is the ultimate hope of mankind, America is the last best hope of Earth etc, etc.

There is a conflation of religion and patriotism here that makes me very uneasy. Ronald Reagan flirted with it in his biblically informed vision of America as a “city on a hill” providentially established by God as example to the nations.

It is a troubling that vision as it leads to interventionist foreign policies, which are grounded in national greatness, and point to saturation-bombing most of Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy. They worship their nation in language that should be reserved for God.

Yuk! I'd rather go for the old dead or heart image of Australia than manifest destiny. It's more humble than all that stuff about America's greatness backed by God.

We are coastal fringe dwellers who have found their place at the physical margin of the island-continent. We no longer gaze out across our beachscapes in search of our place in the world. We have found it. We've moved on from Phillip Drew's The Coast Dwellers: Australians Living on the Edge (1994).

Gary,
have a look at Glenn Fuller's
Ockers post at his Event Mechanics weblog. In an earlier post called Fodder out of Opportunities we have an older post draft that relates to our conversation. In it Fuller quotes Noel Pearson from this speech. Pearson says:

Obviously, we’ve got to deal with defensiveness about people’s heritage. Many white Australians, of conservative and traditional bearing, are defensive. Many ordinary Australians are defensive about their own heritage, and if we continue to cast a politics that disregards the understandable and natural defensiveness of people about their own identity, about their own history, and about their own self-feeling, then we’re going to continue to galvanise people into a denialist position. Of course the culture wars have made great fodder out of the opportunities here to turn acknowledgement and empathy into an accusation to the politically correct seeking to impose black-armbands on everyone.

If 'we' are defensive about our settler society and farming in regional Australia, then we ordinary coastal dwellers are not defensive about our beach heritage.

Kevin,
we treat Port Elliot that way to ----we go for a walk, have a drink,or visit the beach.

Re Bromme --lucky you--its ages since I've been there. Suzanne was there a year or so ago for a week and just loved it.