I lean my back against the salt-bleached granite of the headland and I shout to the Tasman!
You roaring, unbitted water! You magnificent, green-shouldered brute driving up out of the roaring south!
I accept you! I take you into my blood and my marrow!
I see the foam boiling white over the bar at Tomakin,
I see the long white line of the Broulee spit stretching its long tongue into the blue,
And I say there is nothing greater than this—there is nothing more sacred than the salt-crust on an old man’s arm or the wild, tangled hair of the banksia thrashing in the gale!

Stop! Pause with me here by the tide-line!
Who is this walking the sand with wet boots and an observing eye? Who is this taking inventory of the wrack?
Is it you, my brother? Is it you, sister, watching the cormorant dry its wings?
I smell the rotting bull-kelp! I smell the iodine and the warm mulch of the tea-tree swamp!
I embrace the plastic fragment washed up from the freighter, I embrace the turpentine-pile gnawed by the worm,
For nothing is vile that the ocean spits up—all of it belongs to the great circuit, all of it is part of me!

Southward toward Moruya and the river-mouth! Northward toward Batemans and the dark islands!
I sing the men who pull the oyster-leases in the grey dawn!
I sing the children splashing in the warm rock-pools where the anemone opens its red mouth!
I am the surf-caster standing motionless on the point waiting for the salmon!
I am the wave that breaks and the sand that takes the blow!
Not a single shell is crushed underfoot but I am crushed with it;
Not a single gannet plunges from the air but I plunge down into the green heart of the sea!
Heave, you great rollers! Beat upon the Australian shore!
We are here—you and I—and we are magnificent together!

And you, Camerado, whoever you are, holding this page in your hand while the wind rattles your windows,
Do you think I am only writing of salt and sand?
Do you think these waves are only water breaking upon an Australian bar?
I give you the whole continent rolled in a breaker! I give you the weight of the sky and the cold floor of the deep!
Step down from your porch! Kick off your shoes and let the foam strike your ankles!
The tide is coming in, and the great pulse of the universe is beating under our feet,
And nothing is small, and nothing is finite, and everything is now, forever!