Before flattering ourselves that our tourist dollars are doing the South Coast a favour, we should think of more durable presents to take down the Clyde. The coast cannot just wait for trees to recover, despite the odd green fuzz now appearing on their trunks. Nor can locals rely on a Zoom boom, as sea-changers learn to appreciate how they could work from McMansions within sound of the surf.
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One simple step would be to institute a bushfire levy on tourists, asking not for cash but for a donation to buy a tree or to clear forest floor.
Folk living at the coast still seem traumatised, ready to display their photographs of pitch-black or bright-orange skies at noon, mesmerised by how close the fires came to wrecking their lives and livelihoods. Outside one local library a "place of last resort" bears mute witness. Giving young trees for a fresh start used to be traditional for new Canberra homeowners; we need to apply that generosity to coast neighbours.
Food comes next. The woman I love once suggested we set up in Braidwood to sell hampers to affluent Canberrans who realised runny cheese, crispy bread, a coffee press and decent wine were not customary fare at the coast. Used hampers would be dropped back at the end of a satiated weekend.
Now eating options have expanded beyond battered fish and chicken parma, with an Italian restaurant on Bermagui wharf, a richly varied menu at the Tathra Hotel, Rick Stein's at Mollymook and a French bistro in Tilba. Millennials may rejoice: one ice cream shop now advertises dried fig and quinoa flavour. More, though, needs to be done. If a celebrated Japanese restaurant can plonk down in secluded Tasmania (Masaaki's Sushi in the Huon Valley), then why not another at Malua Bay? A bush tucker menu would also be both timely and tasty.
Our next contribution could be linguistic. That coast contains far too many streets prosaically named Beach, Cliff or even Bridgeview. The Yuin people have offered us their deeply resonant name, Gulaga, for a humpbacked mountain. Tathra's headland walk goes so far as to provide local names for two lethal enemies of ours - black snakes and great white sharks.
We might reclaim more First Nations names; who were Jervis and Bateman, after all? Sadly, two splendidly evocative names are already taken. Numbugga is outside Bega, while you climb Brown Mountain (another shocker of a name) before reaching Bumbalong Creek. A bit of quality control would be required. As one example needing correction, Wallaga Lake Heights unhappily manages to combine Indigenous tradition with modern pretension.
In addition, we might encourage a few more festivals. I understand why a barbaric form of shark fishing has been banned from Tathra wharf for the past 24 years. Nonetheless, that spot - with its big swells, theatrical views, deep water and occasional passing whales - would be ideal for a coast version of our Birdman competition. Instead of placidly paddling back through muddy lake waters, competitors would be invigorated by cold saltwater as well as a frisson of terror about return of the sharks.
Bermagui's exquisitely rocks-enclosed, sea water-fed Blue Pool calls out not merely for a more melodious name but for regular competitions. A pool to beach marathon or an endurance race in mid-winter would do.
If denizens of Hobart can leap into the Derwent on winter solstice, why could not Canberrans do the same at Bermagui? Nudity would be optional. Together, Tathra wharf and the Blue Pool, then a lap up and down Pigeon House, could form the basis of a coast-wide festival of dares.
- Mark Thomas is a Canberra-based writer.
