Introduction

The beach holds a key position in the Australian national imaginary. Beaches are mythologised in contemporary film and television, music, literature and sport, as places of Australian life and culture. Beaches are portrayed as places of fun, leisure, fitness, relaxation, health and social activity. Fundamentally, beaches are conceptualised as egalitarian spaces, where people are free to express themselves, where there are ostensibly no barriers to entry, and where people can feel included in the national pastime of visiting the beach. In this way, the egalitarian nature of the beach is claimed to reflect the broader Australian society and national identity, underpinned by tenets such as the ‘fair go’ and mateship. Further, the development of a dominant Australian national identity is closely connected to the beach, with the mid-twentieth century surf life saver, as a muscular, bronzed, masculine figure, portrayed as a key symbol of Australian-ness. However, these claims of egalitarianism and the beach overlook the structural inequalities that exist within Australian society, and limit access to, and belonging within, Australian beaches.

A significant body of literature has analysed beaches and coastal spaces in Australia and throughout the world, in relation to issues of class, health and wellbeing and inequality. This research shows how beaches do not simply exist as neutral spaces. The ways that people interact with beaches are deeply intertwined with, and affected by class, race and ethnicity, gender, power and privilege (Abdel-Fattah, 2016; Ellison, 2011; Ellison & Hawkes, 2016, Johns, 2008; Ramos, 2019). For example, within Australian cities, coastal areas such as Sydney’s Coogee (median house value AUD$3.68 million) or Melbourne’s Brighton (median house value AUD$3.25 million, as of March 2023) are among the least affordable places to live, restricting who has ready beach access. The opportunity to learn how to swim is also mediated by class and poverty, meaning that for many, the beach can be experienced as a dangerous place (Wheaton et al., 2020; White et al., 2020). Further, the very concept of leisure itself is fundamentally shaped by structural inequalities related to the distribution of paid and unpaid work (Watts, 1993). These inequalities can impact opportunities to experience the health and wellbeing benefits of spending time on beaches and coastal spaces (Britton & Foley, 2021; Dean et al., 2022; Olive & Wheaton, 2021; Oostenbach et al., 2022; Wheaton et al., 2020; White et al., 2020). This was further illustrated in Australia throughout 2020 and 2021, as lockdowns and restrictions on mobility further limited opportunities for people to access beaches (Astell-Burt & Feng, 2021; Clark, 2021). For example, Astell-Burt and Feng (2021) found that people in financially precarious positions were less inclined to visit beaches, and derived fewer positive benefits from those visits.

Moreover, this chapter analyses the role of the beach as part of a more complex Australian national imaginary. As I show, the claiming of beaches within a national imaginary that is dominated by Anglo-Saxon symbols and images, is part of a broader process of constructing territorial sovereignty, as highlighted by Papastergiadis (2004). Through this chapter, I analyse how film, television and literature have frequently constructed beaches as places of Australian life and culture, which primarily depict white, Anglo-Saxon bodies on the beach. This constructs the beach as a white place, creating a cultural imaginary that supports the occupation and possession of beaches. Following this, I show how beaches are then operationalised as border spaces, where this occupation and possession are reproduced and defended. I draw on the examples of the Cronulla Riots and Reclaim the Beach protests, to show how the perceived threats of ‘the Other’ are used as a catalyst for violence. The perpetrators of this violence justify their acts in the name of protecting the settler-colonial national imaginary that privileges whiteness as ‘ordinary’ in beach spaces. Next, I show how Australian immigration policy since 2001 has followed a similar approach, where violence against people arriving in Australia by boat is justified as a necessary show of force to protect Australian borders. Here, the beach is constructed as a border to be protected to support national security. Operation Sovereign Borders, initially developed by the Abbott Federal Government to ‘stop the boats’, is a key example of this. Finally, I show how small acts of resistance are seeking to change the narrative of beaches, as a place of whiteness, masculinity and patriarchy, to create more inclusive beaches, and a more inclusive national imaginary.

The Beach and the National Imaginary

The beach is frequently mythologised in Australian media and popular culture as a place that is central to Australian life, the Australian identity and national psyche (Abdel-Fattah, 2016; Britton et al., 2018; Huffer et al., 2018; Lems et al., 2016). This is particularly evident in the portrayal of beach life and culture in films, television and books such as ‘Puberty Blues’, ‘The Coolangatta Gold’, ‘Storm Boy’, ‘Home & Away’, ‘Bondi Rescue’ and Tim Winton’s ‘Breath’ (Lems et al., 2016). In these publications and cultural documents, the beach is framed as the place where Australian life happens. The beach provides the backdrop for these representations of Australian-ness. In addition, the situatedness of these storylines on the beach, complete with cultural markers such as surfing and swimming in the ocean, is critical in positioning these as Australian stories.

The position of the beach within the Australian national imaginary is reinforced through a number of films and documentaries, that aim to capture the position of the beach in the Australian imaginary. For example, the documentary series ‘The Beach’, produced in 2000 and narrated by actor David Wenham, describes how:

The beach has become our defining experience, which is not surprising considering 3 out of 4 of us live just 15 minutes from the coast. The beach is with us from birth, as small children, to death, as failing, ageing beings confronting our mortality. The beach is the lens through which we view and interpret our lives. (National Film and Sound Archives Australia, 2000)

Similarly, the short film ‘At the Beach’, presents images of life on Australian beaches (Commonwealth Film Unit, 1971). This includes footage of suntanned, exclusively Anglo-Saxon bodies on the beach, including small children, young people and older adults. These scenes depict the beach as a place of leisure for Australian people, who are filmed relaxing on beach towels, playing in the sand, applying zinc cream, swimming in the ocean and surfing waves. Through these two documents, the beach is presented as somewhere that Australian people go, to unwind, relax, break free from everyday constraints, and spend their leisure time. Many of these images feature predominantly people from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds at the beach, which, inadvertently or otherwise, conveys a sense that this demographic is representative of the ordinary Australian and that the beach is a place where ordinary Australians go. Through these cultural documents, as well as in film and television, the beach is portrayed as an Anglo-Saxon space, where whiteness is conceptualised as a characteristic of the ‘ordinary Australian’. As Kelly and Lobo state, the beach is the ‘archetypal white space in the Australian imaginary’ (Kelly & Lobo, 2017, p. 366). According to Papastergiadis (2004, p. 11):

The white Australia policy may have been formally revoked in 1973 but its structural influence in the national imaginary has not entirely receded. Whiteness is still deeply embedded in the nation’s self-image and is a pervasive feature of the repertoire of symbols and icons that dominate the representation of social and political life.

Those symbols and icons of whiteness are reproduced in beach spaces that confer these spaces as white places. For example, Gibson’s (2001) analysis of the ‘7 up’ series, focusing on the experiences of one participant who moved to Australia, highlights how the beach is used to distinguish between Australian life and identity, and Englishness. The beach, and beach culture, is evoked to connect with an Australian identity, including thongs, stubbies (short shorts), surfing and barbecues. As Gibson (2001) shows, the imagery and identity are often framed as reflecting a shift away from Britishness and the declining British influence on Australian society. However, Gibson claims that this interpretation effectively erases the ongoing colonial power of Britain in Australia, as well as erasing and silencing the invasion of Australia by Britain and the subsequent dispossession of First Nations peoples from land and culture. This erasure is evident in the construct of the Anglo-Saxon body on the beach as ‘ordinary’.

Gibson (2001, p. 286) contrasts this with the rights and recognition of First Nations peoples in Australia:

The connection here is through a consideration of the political conditions required for the practices of a group to be considered ‘ordinary’…there is a constitutional obstacle in Australia to Aboriginal people being able to claim such a status: their still anomalous position in relation to formal institutions of governance. While the High Court’s decision on Mabo may have done away with the legal fiction of terra nullius, Indigenous sovereignty has yet to be formally recognized.

In addition to media portrayals of the beach as a space of leisure, the beach is also conceptualised as a place that reflects the supposed egalitarian nature of Australian society (Ellison, 2010, 2011; Lems et al., 2016). Beaches are constructed as classless spaces which are free, open and accessible to people from all backgrounds. According to Delaney (2019):

We take it for granted that the beach belongs to all of us. If someone says they own it, it feels like a deep affront, the symptom of a society gone wrong somewhere along the line. It’s like trying to own the sky. We are a secular nation but if we have a spiritual place, somewhere where we might access the divine, it is in the ocean. You see swimmers at that second before they fully immerse themselves – the concentration, the intake of breath. It looks as if they are praying. After that first full-bodied contact, they emerge gasping and exultant.

This interpretation positions the beach as a spiritual place, which is echoed by author Tim Winton in ‘The Beach’ (National Film and Sound Archives Australia, 2000). Furthermore, these statements and images reflect an assumption that many Australians associate Australian-ness with beach culture. In addition, these definitions of the beach also convey a belief that Australians feel comfortable at the beach and in the water, while the beach is assumed to be accessible for most people. Further, terms like ‘we’ and ‘our’ are used extensively, to encapsulate a collective, shared experience of the beach, as inclusive spaces which all are able to access.

Olive’s interpretation of the beach reveals a deeper layer of complexity, as spaces deeply embedded in Australia’s history and present, and which are central to colonisation in Australia:

Australia’s beaches are key to mainstream Australian national identity. They mark our continental edges and acted as the first point of contact for colonial encounter. Smashed ships, lost lives, held hands, arrivals, last looks, political protest, sex and pleasure, violence and death, a place of harvest and nutrition, a place to watch the sun rise and set ‒ beaches have long shaped everyday life for people across the continent now known as Australia. (Britton et al., 2018, p. 149)

The concept of a mainstream Australian identity, within a national imaginary, as being developed in relation to the beach is frequently reproduced in Australian film, television and literature, which does not aim to challenge the construct of Australian-ness as being white, Anglo-Saxon and suntanned.

Colonial Imaginaries of the Beach

Ascribing the beach as a white space, and as a key part of the settler-colonial national imaginary, reflects the way in which beaches have been claimed by those who identify with this interpretation of Australia and Australian-ness. As Kelly and Lobo (2017) describe, this is a form of white governmentality, where space is claimed by this population, perceiving itself as the ‘ordinary’ members of Australian society. This population then ascribes values to the space as a way of differentiating between who belongs, and who does not (Kelly & Lobo, 2017).

This reflects Mbembe and Meintjes (2003, pp. 25–26) analysis of colonial occupation, as not only taking control of a space, but also re-writing the value and significance of that space in ways that preference the colonial construction of sovereignty:

Colonial occupation itself was a matter of seizing, delimiting, and asserting control over a physical geographical area—of writing on the ground a new set of social and spatial relations. The writing of new spatial relations (territorialization) was, ultimately, tantamount to the production of boundaries and hierarchies, zones and enclaves; the subversion of existing property arrangements; the classification of people according to different categories; resource extraction; and, finally, the manufacturing of a large reservoir of cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries gave meaning to the enactment of differential rights to differing categories of people for different purposes within the same space; in brief, the exercise of sovereignty. Space was therefore the raw material of sovereignty and the violence it carried with it. Sovereignty meant occupation, and occupation meant relegating the colonized into a third zone between subjecthood and objecthood.

In this way, the mainstream media, film, television and literature which constructs the beach as a site for the quintessential Australian life and character, are in the process of creating a cultural imaginary that frames the beach as a white space. This process imbues the beach, and other places across Australia, with values, meanings and purposes that align with the settler-colonial project of sovereignty and violence.

Mbembe' and Meintjes' (2003) analysis of territorialisation and the construction of borders is also evident in the framing of Australian beaches as borders, which demarcate Australian territory. As Papastergiadis (2004) describes, the concept of the beach as a border is deeply interconnected with the invasion complex that has been integral to the Australian national imaginary. Australian governments have pursued territorial sovereignty since the Federation in 1901. The very first Federal Government of Edmund Barton implemented the White Australia Policy, whereas the current government of Anthony Albanese maintains offshore ‘processing’ and indefinite detention of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. As Papastergiadis (2004, p. 8) describes, this motivation for territorial sovereignty is underpinned by an Australian nationalism which is shaped by ‘The myth of terra nullius and the fantasy of an “Asian invasion”…Combined, they have produced a profound anxiety over space and mobility’. According to Papastergiadis (2004, p. 12):

The othering that occurs in the invasion complex is consistent with the classical representations of the stereotypical enemy. It proceeds by monopolizing the ideals of humanity for the self and projecting the other in a dehumanized state. Once the other is constructed in the position of debasement, abjection and evil, then not only are they excluded from the field of human values, civic rights and moral obligations, but the boundary that divides ‘us’ from ‘them’ becomes even more crucial. This boundary becomes invested with the need for security against decline and contamination.

Through this lens, the beach, as a physical and visual border in an island imaginary, becomes a place of defence, security, possession, containment and protection from ‘the Other’, which is constructed as an enemy (McMahon, 2005, 2010; Papastergiadis, 2004). Throughout John Howards prime ministership (1996–2007), asylum seekers, refugees and First Nations peoples were constructed as an enemy to fight and contain, in the name of protecting Australia’s territorial sovereignty. Violence against ‘the Other’, was, and is, framed as a necessary form of self-defence in the name of national security, with the beach as a key boundary where that violence is perpetrated (Papastergiadis, 2004; Perera, 2014).

The beach acts as a border in multiple ways. First, the beach is framed as a place where a dominant national and cultural identity is reproduced and reinforced in retaliation to a perceived threat to white sovereignty (Abdel-Fattah, 2016; Ellison, 2011; Lems et al., 2016; Moreton-Robinson, 2018; Moreton-Robinson & Nicoll, 2006). Beaches are also a site where the ‘right to exclude’ is reinforced by the Australian government, particularly in relation to refugees and asylum seekers arriving by boat (Ellison, 2010; Lems et al., 2016; Perera, 2009). In this instance, the beach is a literal border. In each interpretation of the beach as a border:

…the beach is constituted by epistemological, ontological, and axiological violence, whereby the nation’s past and present treatment of Indigenous people becomes invisible and negated through performative acts of possession that ontologically and socially ground white male bodies. (Moreton-Robinson, 2018, pp. 12–13)

The Beach as a Site of Dispossession: Colonisation and Ownership

The settler-colonial anxiety with possession and invasion, identity and territorial sovereignty is evident in the construct of the beach as a ‘site of a “nation-building” project premised on the exclusion of Indigenous people’ (Perera, 2014, p. 2). As Moreton-Robinson (2018, p. 3) describes,

Colonization is the historical process through which the performativity of the white male body and its relationship to the environment has been realized and defined, particularly in former British colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. In staking possession to Indigenous lands, white male bodies were taking control and ownership of the environments they encountered by mapping land and naming places, which is an integral part of the colonizing process.

The Western concepts of possession and ownership are integral to colonisation, and are reproduced in numerous ways that reinforce beaches as colonised spaces (McMahon, 2005; Moreton-Robinson, 2018; Ramos, 2019). First, ownership of beaches is reinforced through institutions, the State and the Judiciary, who, assuming crown ownership, develop and uphold laws that determine how beaches should be interacted with, and who can legitimately access Australian beaches (Moreton-Robinson & Nicoll, 2006; Ramos, 2019). Second, examples such as surf localism highlight ways in which ownership of a beach is claimed, reflecting a sense of proprietorship that reproduces colonial legacies (Britton et al., 2018; Olive, 2019). Third, the ownership is evident in the dominant position assumed by suntanned, white, male bodies on the beach, which Moreton-Robinson (2018, p. 5) describes as being reified in media ‘as the epitome of Australian manhood’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2018, p. 5). These images of Australian-ness are reproduced by the cultural documents, such as films and television, which seek to ‘manufacture’ a settler-colonial cultural imaginary that seeks to claim the beach in the process of nation-building that Perera (2014) refers to.

With regard to claimed ownership and patriarchal white sovereignty, Moreton-Robinson and Nicoll (2006, p. 150) state:

Race, class, gender, sexuality and ableness are markers that circumscribe the privileges conferred by patriarchal white sovereignty within Australian society. As a regime of power, patriarchal white sovereignty operates ideologically, materially and discursively to reproduce and maintain its investment in the nation as a white possession.

Similarly, as Lems et al. (2016, p. 32) state:

Dominated by the white, male surfers and lifeguards of Anglo background, the beach arguably denies a space in the idealized national image for women, Indigenous people and people from other migrant backgrounds, acting instead as a constant reminder of who ‘really’ belongs in the Australian imaginary.

In many ways, the reproduction of patriarchal white sovereignty does not acknowledge dispossession of First Nations people, or the relationship First Nations people have with beaches (Moreton-Robinson, 2018). As Moreton-Robinson (2018, p. 1) states, ‘Beaches remain important places within Indigenous coastal peoples’ territories, though the silence about our ownership is deafening’. In this way, the reification of the white, male body on the beach, within the broader patriarchal Australian society, seeks to reproduce the dominance of this population in this landscape and subjugate First Nations peoples relationship to the beach, and the meanings and values that First Nations peoples associate with beaches.

Beaches as Border Spaces

The construct of beaches as border spaces, where territorial sovereignty is exercised by nationalist Anglo-Saxon populations, is evident in the 2005 Cronulla race riots (New South Wales), and the more recent ‘Reclaim the Beach’ protests held on the St Kilda beach (Victoria). Through these examples, the beach is operationalised as a site for settler-colonial possession and sovereignty, which is used as a conceptual border to be defended against people who are framed as enemies of the Anglo-Saxon interpretation of Australian identity and national imaginary.

Cronulla Riots

The 2005 Cronulla Riots reflect a stark expression of settler-colonial violence which sought to claim Cronulla Beach, and the broader region of the Sutherland Shite, as a white space, and reinforce white sovereign ownership and possession (Clark, 2021; Ellison, 2011; Johns et al., 2017; Moreton-Robinson, 2018; Norquay & Drozdzewski, 2017). On December 11, 2005, thousands of primarily young Anglo-Saxon men organised to meet at Cronulla Beach, to commit acts of violence towards people of Arabic appearance. This was in response to an earlier altercation between two lifeguards and young men of Lebanese background on Cronulla Beach. The lifeguards were claimed to have been physically assaulted. The incident was escalated by conservative media personalities such as radio host Alan Jones (Norquay & Drozdzewski, 2017), who had led a campaign against Lebanese Muslims in Australia, claiming that ‘They simply rape, pillage and plunder a nation that's taken them in’ (ABC News, 2012).

Days prior to the riot, Jones read emails sent to him by listeners, which invoked racism and violence against the Lebanese community in Australia (Marr, 2005). For example, one listener emailed Jones to say:

Alan, it's not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, it's thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it's been taken over by this scum. It's not a few causing trouble. It's all of them. (Marr, 2005)

As Marr (2005) describes, Jones called for ‘a rally, a street march, call it what you will. A community show of force’ against Lebanese people in Australia. On air, Jones read out a text message that was used to attract participants for the riot:

Come to Cronulla this weekend to take revenge. This Sunday every Aussie in the Shire get down to North Cronulla to support the Leb and wog bashing day (Marr, 2005).

This moment in Australia’s history represented a violent assertion of a dominant Australian identity, and an active attempt to exclude those who are not perceived to be conforming (Ellison, 2011; Moreton-Robinson, 2018; Moreton-Robinson & Nicoll, 2006). Ignoring the development of Australia as a settler-colony, rioters claimed the legitimate position as ‘real Aussies’, assuming the role of gatekeeper by marking people of Lebanese descent as ‘un-Australian’ (Ellison, 2011). In this example, where young men re-asserted their Australian-ness through writing slogans such as ‘We grew here, you flew here’ and ‘Ethnic Cleansing Unit’ on their bodies and clothes, the mobilisation of whiteness was in response to a perceived threat. According to Moreton-Robinson, 2018, p. 10), whiteness was constructed as:

an inalienable property, the purity of which is always potentially at threat from racialised others through contamination and dispossession. At Cronulla, the white male body performatively repossessed the beach through anti-Arabic resentment, thus mimetically reproducing the racialized colonial violence enacted to dispossess Indigenous people.

That this action took place on the beach is not coincidental, with the beach constructed as a racialised space and often interpreted as a place of white retreat and white safety (Wheaton et al., 2020). The beach is often claimed as a place where a dominant Anglo-Saxon interpretation of Australian identity is inextricably connected (Lems et al., 2016; Moreton-Robinson, 2018).

Reclaim the Beach

This construct of the beach is evident in a post on right wing news site XYZ, which advertised the ‘Reclaim the Beach’ protests at St Kilda beach in January 2019 (Hiscox, 2019). The Reclaim the Beach protests were organised by Far Right organisation Reclaim Australia, and sought to emulate the exclusionary sentiment and violence of the Cronulla Riots. Hiscox (2019) claimed that immigration contributed to a crime wave, and that:

Native European Australians cannot be expected to watch passively and let this happen, thus a peaceful political gathering has been organised for St Kilda Beach this Saturday, January 5 2019 at 1pm, to show the Victorian government that the people want strong action on #AfricanGangs crime, and that we oppose the failed policy of multiculturalism.

In this instance, African Australians are constructed as an enemy to “Native European Australians”, who are claimed to have a rightful place in Australia. The symbolism of the beach is used to align the protest with the beach and its place in the Australian imaginary. This invokes a framing of beaches as white places which reflect a dominant version of Australian-ness and Australian identity. The beach is then portrayed as a border space, and battleground, where ‘Native European Australians’ should protect and defend their sovereignty. Comments on this post echo these sentiments, with one commenter stating that ‘Australia is a hell for working class men’, while also claiming that Australia dominated by various population groups who are all either described as ‘scum’ or variations of this term.

Further, this post describes Donald Trump as a ‘God Emperor’, and also states that:

Australia was founded as a homeland for British and European people, and the current policies of mass immigration, multiculturalism and demographic replacement by our globalist government is unconstitutional. (Hiscox, 2019)

This comment highlights the fear and anxiety that the Far Right associate with people that they construct as ‘the Other’, who, according to them, have no claims to being in Australia. Activating the beach as a border space is integral to this claim of territorial sovereignty, and is deeply interconnected to the broader shift towards border protection and white sovereignty in Australian politics and place making. As Perera (2014, p. 2) describes, these acts are not isolated from deeper structural shifts in Australian society, and from the border policing that occurs across multicultural cities such as Sydney:

Borders operate not only spatially, but also conceptually and analytically. To understand the violence on Cronulla Beach as an aberration or as the outcome of a set of local circumstances alone is itself a form of border policing: it denies the sociospatial linkages that sustain Sydney as a city constituted by racialised and ethnicised borders within a neoliberal regime that both recodes and reinscribes colonial demarcations, scales and categories.

Territorial Sovereignty and National Security

The emphasis on national security, border protection and territorial sovereignty has underpinned Australian government policy for over two decades. This has manifested within sections of the population as a paranoia that is made visible through episodes such as the Cronulla Riots and is reflected in the growing support for, and visibility of, Far Right organisations. According to Perera (2014, p. 3):

The overarching imperative of national security now combines with neoliberal logic on the one hand and assimilationist pressures on the other to train the searchlights on new spaces of racial fear and danger.

This is particularly evident in Australian politics since 2001, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. Less than two months after this incident, Prime Minister John Howard launched the Liberal Party campaign for the 2001 federal election. Howard evoked national security, in his now infamous speech at the campaign launch (2001a):

National security is therefore about a proper response to terrorism. It's also about having a far sighted, strong, well thought out defence policy. It is also about having an uncompromising view about the fundamental right of this country to protect its borders, it's about this nation saying to the world we are a generous open hearted people taking more refugees on a per capita basis than any nation except Canada, we have a proud record of welcoming people from 140 different nations. But we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

Howard repeated the assertion that ‘we will decide' who comes to Australia two more times, and then again in a speech a few days later, in Tasmania (Howard, 2001b). This moment changed the course of the 2001 federal election, and Howard was again re-elected. Similarly, Tony Abbott, as opposition leader, infamously pledged to ‘stop the boats’ in his successful campaign for the 2013 federal election (Abbott, 2023). Shortly after being deposed as Prime Minister by his Liberal party colleagues in 2015, Abbott delivered the ‘Margaret Thatcher Lecture’, claiming that (ABC News, 2015):

There was at least a hint of Thatcher about my government in Australia. Stopping the flow of illegal immigrant boats. Because a country that can’t control its borders starts to lose control of itself…No country or continent can open its borders to all comers, without fundamentally weakening itself.

Scott Morrison, who was Minister for Immigration within the Abbott Federal Government, kept a boat-shaped trophy in his office as a memento of his time in this role, which featured the phrase ‘I stopped these’ in black lettering (Davidson, 2018).

‘Operation Sovereign Borders’

As Abbott describes (2023), a key element of his plan for ‘stopping the boats’ was the development of Operation Sovereign Borders. Similar to the Far Right protests highlighted above, Australian Government policy and initiatives such as ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ and Australian Border Force operationalise beaches as border spaces (Lems et al., 2016; Perera, 2009; Ramos, 2019). Australian Border Force, and its ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ are developed to monitor and act against people coming ‘illegally’ to Australia by ocean. In particular, people arriving by boat in Australia following forced migration, first encounter Australia through arrival on its beaches. Yet this arrival is rarely met with welcoming acceptance or even neutrality.

As Ramos (2019, p. 28) describes, ‘when refugees arrive, they enter an already intricate space dominated by racialised conditions’. This is illustrated vividly by Perera (2009), who refers to an example of a group of people seeking asylum from Sri Lanka, who were found on a remote Australian beach. As Perera (2009, p. 648) describes, the men were dressed in their best suits, hoping to make a good impression upon their new hosts and to ‘be ready for prospective job interviews’. Perera (2009, p. 648) refers to the telephone linesman who found the men:

They were all very polite, and each of them shook my hand and told me they were Sri Lankan … You could tell that they didn’t fit in, and they looked like they were dressed in their Sunday best … they were really weak when they shook my hand … Once we had managed to make sense of each other’s English I told them there was a bus coming to pick them up, the cops’ bus.

As Perera (2009, p. 648) describes, the linesman took on the role of:

…the grudging host, one who stops to fill their canteens with water before consigning them to the space of the detention camp, the holding place for the uncitizen at the limits of the nation. The casual, serviceable brutality of the linesman who assures them that ‘there is a bus coming to meet them’ before promptly summoning ‘the cops’ bus’ is reinforced by the humorous and derisive reporting of this incident in the national media.

In such examples, the beach is a meeting point between a newly arrived person who has made a dangerous voyage to escape a new land, and the settler-colonial host, who assumes the right to exclude.

Operation Sovereign Borders, and Australian Border Force, highlight the way that the Australian border and surrounding oceans are patrolled to prevent people from arriving by boat. For example, in a video published in August 2023, Rear Admiral Justin Jones provides this direct message (Australian Border Force, 2023a):

Do not try to come to Australia on an illegal boat journey. These routes are closed to illegal migration. You will not settle in Australia and you will not be granted permanent residency. If you attempt an illegal maritime journey, you are wasting your time, your money and ultimately, your life. You have Zero Chance of success.

This is reiterated by the Australian Government’s (2023) Operation Sovereign Borders website, which reinforces the ‘zero chance’ message to prospective arrivals:

Australia's borders are patrolled all day, every day. Anyone who attempts an unauthorised boat voyage to Australia will be turned back to their point of departure, returned to their home country, or transferred to a third country for processing. Since 2013, Australia has intercepted every boat attempting to enter illegally. Every vessel is closely watched. There is zero chance of illegal migration to Australia.

This display of power, as a settler-colonial government, reflects the fear of a ‘peaceful invasion’ that Abbott (2023) suggested was likely to occur if borders were not maintained by the government. This approach and the violence it perpetrates, including the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in offshore locations, the turning back of asylum seeker boats and the outsourcing of detention centres to transnational corporations, is therefore framed as a necessity.

This violence is also evident in the discursive dehumanisation of asylum seekers evident in government communication. For example, Australian Border Force (2023b) issue an Operation Sovereign Borders Monthly Update’ which reports on the numbers of people and vessels entering Australia. To illustrate, the August 2023 update reads:

During this reporting period:

  • There were no new UMAs;

  • 0 UMAs were transferred from Australia to a regional processing country, either as new arrivals or returning after temporary purpose in Australia;

  • 0 UMAs were transferred from a regional processing country to Australia for a temporary purpose or as accompanying family;

  • 0 UMAs voluntarily returned to their country of origin from a regional processing country.

People seeking asylum are referred to as UMAs (unauthorised maritime arrivals), whereas ‘processing country refers to the countries that Australia has outsourced immigration detention to. Through such policy discourses, asylum seekers’ humanity is erased through reference to acronyms and ‘processing’, where responsibility is transferred from the Australian Government to the government of other countries, such as Nauru (and previously, Papua New Guinea).

The Australian Border Force Commissioner, Michael Outram (2023) provided a further interpretation of borders, as presenting economic opportunities:

And of course, so many people of our country folk are doing it tough, trying to balance household budgets and keep up with the cost of living. If you're wondering what that has to do with the border, well the answer is: it's actually got quite a lot to do with the border. Because the border primarily is an economic asset. Our border and all its elements add up to nearly a TRILLION dollars in revenue, visitor spending and two-way trade each year. And about one in five Australian jobs is supported by trade. So my job is about more than just security and border protection, it's also about economic productivity. In fact it might be primarily about supporting economic productivity and enhancing the wellbeing of Australians. [original emphasis]

In this regard, the border, demarcated by the Australian coastline, is reconceptualised as a source of economic value. Sovereignty, and sovereign borders, can then be understood as a neoliberal project that aims to protect national security but provide security for the economic interests of the nation.

The Beach as a ‘Plastic Space’: Changing Narratives

The examples of exclusion and discrimination highlighted here reflect the construction of beaches in relation to dominant social norms and values, which are founded on colonisation and patriarchal white sovereignty. This highlights the effect of social structure in shaping the ways that people interact with key aspects of Australian society. However, it is also important to recognise peoples’ capacity to respond to marginalisation and discrimination in ways that create counter-narratives that challenge the dominant perspective. For example, Wheaton et al. (2020, pp. 87–88) refer to McGloin (2007), who

…focuses on experiences of indigenous Australian Aboriginal surfers and elders, and how they contest dominant projections of the white nation, and of surfing as a form of cultural expression. McGloin (2007) argues that Aboriginal ways of understanding and relating to the ocean are different to dominant white representations, that there is ‘a distinction in philosophy and practice’.

Concepts of localism and territoriality are frequently embodied and enacted by white, male surfers (Britton et al., 2018; Olive, 2019). Female surfers often experience aggression and exclusion from male surfers who assume superiority in the water and within surf culture. However, as Britton et al. (2018, pp. 153–154) states:

…women are subverting the historical bikini-clad, beach-bound images of women by posting images that show them in the water and promote their skills as surfers; that emphasise their knowledge of coastal places and cultures; and, most wonderfully, that celebrate the role other women who surf play in their lives. In Byron Bay, as in many other places, women who surf are a growing visible presence and their participation is changing surfing culture. In part, they’re doing this simply by continuing to paddle out every day, as well as more active efforts.

Further, Lems et al. (2016, p. 35) highlight the ways that young Karen and Hazara people from refugee and migrant backgrounds develop narratives of connection and belonging to beaches, which subvert the construct of beaches as an Anglo-Saxon space. Lems et al. (2016) describe the beach as a ‘plastic space’ which offers numerous possibilities. As Lems et al. (2016, p. 35), claim:

While it is essential to recognize the contested nature of the beach and its links to colonialism, patriarchy, sovereignty and power struggles, we argue that the beach also needs to be reconsidered as a crucial dialogical space, as a contact zone, that allows for diverse stories and experiences of being-at-home in Australia…the beach needs to be re-read as a space where different narratives of Australianness meet and mingle and are formed and performed.

This is an important point, which highlights that while dominant interpretations of beaches are reinforced in ways that seek to exclude, people frequently contest those interpretations through their actions and stories that aim to reshape ideas of what the Australian beach represents.

Conclusion

This study of the beach, in relation to Australian society and the broader concept of Australian-ness, helps to show how places are frequently contested spaces. People interpret places in very different ways, which are often shaped by their own experiences, backgrounds and worldviews. However, we can also see that particular stories and narratives around the beach have been given greater precedence. Thus, the dominant interpretation of the beach as an egalitarian, free and open space fits a neat narrative of Australian society. This interpretation of the beach overlooks the many and varied ways that social and economic inequalities have substantially shaped access to the beach, particularly in urban areas. We can also see how dominant narratives of the beach are used to reproduce the settler-colonist concept of the beach as an Anglo-Saxon place, as evident in the 2005 Cronulla Riots. Further, we can also see how patriarchal constructs and gender norms have positioned male surfers and lifeguards, in particular, as dominant figures. This chapter has highlighted the ways that dominant interpretations of Australian society and identity have been reproduced in exclusionary ways. However, this paper also highlights stories that portray the beach as a place of community building and social action, of inclusion, and as a site where people connect to the natural world. Thus, while power has been exerted through settler-colonisation and patriarchal white sovereignty, as Moreton-Robinson highlights, this power is challenged and usurped by the way that people are creating fluid narratives of Australian-ness.