Finnegan | 2025 | Australia

One need not scratch much varnish off the surface of Australia’s easygoing reputation to uncover darkness. I went into this prepared for a critique of the “locals only” mentality that continues to foment social unrest on beaches in Australia (see also: the Cronulla race riots). Instead, my brain got turned inside out in the best way.

My read is, it must be said, highly idiosyncratic. As an immigrant to this country, it’s easy for me to view tensions from a safe remove that borders on anthropological. A study like this one, then, can stun me without damaging my pride.

But there is also the part of me that is from a place (West Virginia) that, as I grow older and spend more time in Australia, I struggle to accept will never be “home” again. I spent 25 years in the USA and am in my 16th here. Eventually I’ll have lived in Australia — a place where I’ll never be “local” — for longer than I lived in Appalachia, a place that will never again see me as “local”. There will never be a place I can surf, as it were. Existential dread in that same vein is rendered here with heartfelt texture.