On the Edge

Abstract

Cremnophilous genes run in my family: we seek out cliffs and edges, not only their geography-the drop they make, the space they open onto, the water sometimes surging at their base-but also the sweep of view from their precipice. When my parents were first married, they dreamt of building a house cantilevered out from a sea cliff over the rocks and ocean below, but they could never buy the block of land. Now, they live on their piece of coast-hanging to the side of a mountain-and I live on mine, as close as I can get to the shore. It's an odd affinity: we're not much for either the adventures or the anxieties that usually leave people on edge, or on the edge. Nor are we great flag wavers, though this latent cremnophily may be something not just of our particular places but also of this nation-a community created on an edge, and still gripped by so many things unknown, unfinished, unpredictable. When I was growing up, edge-dwelling was all about the sea. The water lapped in and out, its colour changing slightly with ebb or flow while swimmers and surfers pushed out beyond its movement-beyond the land just a little-and into the cool clarity of different shades of water again. But it wasn't the horizon, or what might be beyond, that was compelling. It was that narrow line where wet and dry collided. I'm sixteen or so, and a friend celebrating the freedom of a driving licence takes me in his tiny grey-green Renault around the curving road that hugs the cliffs north of Wollongong and the beaches where we're growing up. The land chokes here, the escarpment butting into the coast and cutting off its plain at the peak above Stanwell Park. You can stand on the first cliff, made famous by kite fliers and hang gliders, and see the country's coast running away into haziness down to the south. The drive feels precarious, a narrow track staked with signs about falling rocks, a wire fence making the flimsiest gesture of stopping them, the juddering drop to the ocean below. clutching the arm rests. But sweeping the car around the last of the curves, my friend says suddenly, We're driving along the edge of Australia.