At the edge of the beach, a platform of rocks welcomes me in low tide. As though a painter has drawn his brush through thick liquid rock, striations are ancient. A surface is cut with a clean swipe showing bubbles from the time when the rock was froth. I’m not a geologist or even a keen amateur knower of rocks but stories jump from the shapes. Tiny gastropods cling inside to the brain-like curves of the stiff froth. Home to life, safety from the pounding sea. Each line, each colour, each texture, is worthy of my time. Yet we’re walking so I sense a leader contemplating the present and the next few kilometres along the Great Ocean Walk uphill from Parker Inlet along the GOW.
