Seawall
Not of sufficient significance to have a name
I am a seawall. The only way to see me is by looking up. My age is young but I am made of ancient stones that surrounded me. Their tawny or dark-grey colours have rested here for eons. Many are riddled with honeycomb bowls or slope smooth and black, even darker when saltwater washes over their surfaces daily. Returned diggers and laconic stoneworkers chipped the thin rectangles for placement. Their balancing act keeps the earth in place. The men had only bush, sea, and sky, while today I have softened into the landscape, their work done. Because I hold aloft the Great Ocean Road. Traffic is invisible from the rockpools. Surge rushes into the troughs with abrupt thunder, withdrawing only slowly as water particles dry on skin. And the nearby relay of closing waves on beach and reef is a gentle rhythm to the ear. Louder than the unseen traffic above, the random exhaust or macho shift of motorbike gears, occasional note of something else going on. Fine grains of mortar may be washed by the night tide or daytime’s finger grip of rockhoppers traversing to and from Separation Creek. New filler has been slapped into crevices here and there where crumble turned to gap. I am solid and resolute. Without me the Road would not exist. Erosion and hardest bracken would make the coast impassable. Forests of eucalypt would fall into the sea. I am the quietest outcome of engineering, no two blocks the same, with a steady blank look. I am warmest in the mornings when sun rises across the strait. Cockatoos make themselves known. A container on the horizon is an object lesson. White blond driftwood tangles with kelp bubbles and tree fern corpses submitted lately by the sea for someone’s consideration. Come midday my purpose stands in high relief. Chatting adults and fossicking kids step from boulder to boulder away from the spray. Their careful stepping in contrast to the rushing surge of water through the corridors of stone, each safe footing an assurance of confidence. Once every so often lately teenagers spraypaint the base with their cool logos. Their artwork sings of happy stealth, but does not outlast the roadsigns high above us, out of sight, on edge. Artwork that will fade to a fad. I am smooth, relatively speaking. I will outlast the afternoon. After the rockhoppers are home again, with their seashell and knotty stick. I shall stare into night as I have all my life, before the Southern Cross rising lopsided from the depths. The cold sets in and a whale passes by. Very rarely a seal still lumbers alive up the stones, for safety or bearings. Wallows in a pool spilling down to another pool, and so on, unfailing into the swirl and surge again. I keep separate the earth from the sea. My back holds the ground and my face is the closest reach of water’s tempestuous edge. Echidnas have nestled against my insider protection, burrowed at a moment’s notice. I imitate the cliffs that shadow the Road and determine its snaking. Through winter I am a forgotten fortress, when in spring storms cannot dislodge a single rectangle. Lately the Road services net the falling heights nearby, plunging silver bolts to hold geography in place. Bushfire wipes out grip, root systems have tentative starts. But I have a firm stand. Grass cannot find a niche nor acacia seed a gap to crack open. March is an interesting time. I rest from the long heat. Gannets pass by unexpectedly. And a few humans each day, to remind the world in particular of humanity. Waves against the reef reach stupendous heights and rain arrives in impressive black clouds.
