The first Geelong Writers Ekphrastic Challenge for 2025 featured the photo Beach, by Anne Franks, inviting writers to respond to the image in a submission of up to 300 words.
Ekphrastic enthusiasts responded to the Beach image with original contributions of up to 300 words, on themes such as memories of childhood, loss of innocence, sibling rivalries, the importance of the sea, and several offered evocative descriptions of the sensations of being at the beach.
We are delighted to publish the writings of the following nineteen writers:
Anne Franks Kate Landishaw Ian Stewart Gail Griffin Allan Barden
Julie Edmonds David Bridge John Heritage Deb Lucas Steve Gray
Jan Price Dulara J. Adam Stone Daphne Delores Winter Howard Osborne
John Margetts Jenny Hurley Geoffrey Gaskill Tony B.
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Daydream
Staring out the window, dribbles of rain raced each other and I was locked in my own thoughts.
“Ben, follow me!!!”
“Where are we going?”
It seemed like an eternity ago, that we were at the beach.
“I saw them yesterday, Ben”
The temperature was on the rise and it was insanely busy at the beach, so Ben knew why I was so keen to get out early.
“There, that’s where we are going.” I was pointing to the pier. Ben could hear the giggles and laughter, but it was not an adventure that he wanted to be a part of.
“Ben, come on, why are you slowing down?” I shouted at him.
“I have sand in my shoe.”
“But… you don’t have shoes” I replied.
As I made it to the Pier, I excitedly rushed through the gathering crowd, word must have gotten around as there was way more people than what I remembered were here yesterday. The excitement in my body was building. Looking into the water, with the wind that had picked up, the roughness of the sea made the depth invisible. I hear the laughter around me, but my excitement turns to nervousness. I have second thoughts. A sudden shove from behind and my heart leaps into my throat, stumbling forward, that brief, weightless panic gripping me before my feet caught the wood and my brain caught up with the shock.
“Come on, ning nong, rain has stopped, beach time!” Ben barely getting the words out, giggling.
A cushion blindsided me from behind, hitting me with all the grace of a wet towel—leaving me dazed, and 99% sure war was declared.
Giggling we jumped through the tiny, sparkling waves; grey clouds slowly fading into the distance, along with the rain, an eternity ago.
– by Anne Franks
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Untethered
Soft, soft, dig-in-your-toes sand,
cold squishy stuff, waterlogged,
packed hard when ocean pulls back,
and I land, leap complete.
Sun heat farther inland,
foot soles burn straying from frothy wavelets.
Alone and all this water, alone
(Does little brother still dawdle,
behind, staring, stock still as
salty foam reaches him, passes,
slips back out?)
I fly again, not tethered, all
the world around me in this splashy, single day.
If I look behind, dark sky and
little brother, I might miss my
beat, might hear some elsewhere
calling. But no, I won’t forfeit
this chance to play.
– by Kate Landishaw
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Innocence
Two children, an afternoon of fun
He stands and waits for water’s rush
Hitched up, avoiding sea’s next gush
She’s in flight; a carefree run
The sense of sand beneath her toes
Each step another burst of joy
A simple pleasure she’ll employ
Around the ankles water flows
The sky is Lawson’s ‘leaden grey’
Does it hide a nasty goal?
Weather has an angry soul
Quickly coming into play
A wind change, a thunderstorm
Materialising in a trice
Gripping, as if in a vice
Day’s pleasure, quickly shorn
Mother, gather children in
Hold them tight and keep them close
Far too valuable to lose
Some other day the sun will grin
[‘Rain in the Mountains’ Henry Lawson]
– by Ian Stewart
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Lift Off
Our class spent the week studying flight. We made paper planes and I learned all these new words about ‘thrust’, ‘gravity’ and ‘lift’. Then we worked out how to keep our planes ‘aloft’ for longer. Next, we watched a Science program on TV and saw how to make kites! I couldn’t believe it when my teacher, Miss Evans, said she was going to ask the Principal, Mr Hayes, during lunchtime, if we could go over to the beach to fly our kites. I’d never had so much fun learning English at my new school on the Gold Coast.
When we came in after lunch, Miss Evans said, ‘The Principal agreed,’ before everyone in our class cheered. ‘However… he said that we could go, only if… only if he could come too!’
We all high 5’d, clapped and called out, ‘Yes!’ just as Mr Hayes appeared at our classroom door, ready to come.
Without wasting any more time, we lined up and made our way out of the school grounds, crossed over the beach road and ran down to the sand. Everyone else seemed to get their kites up in the air without any trouble. All except me.
‘What’s happening here?’ Mr Hayes asked.
‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘Mine’s not working.’
‘I think we can fix that,’ said Mr Hayes, as he took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and tied it to the tail of my kite, then said, ‘You run and I’ll see if I can get it to lift.’
I took off and when I looked over my shoulder, Mr Hayes let go of my kite and it was aloft! I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Now, twenty years later, every time I fly my plane, I think about that day. Thanks Miss Evans. Thanks Mr Hayes.
– by Gail Griffin
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The Jetty
The soundtrack of his childhood was the rhythm of Great Oyster Bay and the crash of waves against the shoreline.
He remembers the sun rising over Freycinet Peninsula painting the sky in colours of red and orange, the bay shimmering in hues of blue and gold, and the sand of Jubilee Beach, cool and damp from the retreating tide, crunching beneath his bare feet as he ran towards the long wooden jetty that stretched into the bay. That jetty was more than just weathered planks and wooden posts – it was his playground.
On hot summer afternoons, he would leap from the jetty to plunge into the cool water below. With friends, he would spend hours diving, swimming and harvesting mussels beneath the wooden beams.
Fishing from the jetty was a lesson in patience and hope. Sometimes, he’d catch nothing but seaweed, but it never mattered. The joy was in the waiting; the anticipation of the catch. Excitement was high when a colony of seagulls was sighted diving for sardines. He always knew that following the sardines would be many salmon to test his silver lures.
While he enjoyed stormy winter days when waves crashed against the jetty sending salt sprays into the air, summer evenings were his favourite. He would sit on the jetty’s edge with friends enjoying coke and ice cream from Darke’s Pier Milk Bar while watching the distant lights of Coles Bay and Swannick twinkle across the bay.
The boy who once ran barefoot along its weathered planks still lingers in his heart. When he closes his eyes, the jetty is still there solid beneath his feet, the scent of salt in the air and the cries of seagulls echoing overhead.
Perhaps that’s the true gift of childhood places—they never really leave us.
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by Allan Barden
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remembering moments by the sea
Dad unhitched the caravan and unfurled the annex.
We disappeared the moment Dad’s impatience flared.
Mum placated Dad and helped him. We returned when the annex was up.
The moment the sea swept around us for the first time since last summer was thrilling.
And returning to school seemed eons away.
I listened to the sea the moment I woke each morning.
If the tide were in, there’d be large waves to ride and a tideline of treasures to explore if it were out.
We waited on the island at dusk for the moment they appeared.
We heard wonder. And felt it.
Whooshing around us and calling from burrows as shearwaters returned to their mates.
Dad enjoyed fishing for garfish.
We hoped he’d catch one, to see the moment of joy on his face.
Sometimes, he caught enough for our tea.
We watched wild seas from the car, awe-struck by the size of the waves
and the moment the track to the island succumbed to the sea,
stranding walkers
before the sea receded in a moment of calm.
We romanticised about being the first to spot a whale.
A moment of excitement (and some jealousy) erupted
when someone, not me, cried,
‘Whale!’
‘Can we go to the lighthouse?’
Each summer, the camera captured the moment we posed against the red door,
pinching our noses because the seaweed stank.
Our holiday ended abruptly the summer when Mum told us she was unwell.
We helped Dad pack up the annex.
(Our lives listed between before and after moments).
The eons passed into the moment we walked back to school.
And next summer seemed eons away.
Until.
The sea swept around us again, the first after moments in summers by the sea without Mum.
– by Julie Edmonds
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Absolute Beach Front
The photo scrolls on mother’s screen
As, with sad pride, we reminisce.
And even now, years passed,
I feel the ribbed sand underfoot,
Toes clenched anxiously
Against what danger lurks beneath.
My sister shrieks past,
Delighting in spraying cold water everywhere.
I see life’s patterns captured in the moment,
Arms and legs declaring philosophies,
Caution versus animation.
No doubts for Julie,
The hare to my tortoise,
Dashing through life
To drown in an ocean of fulfilment;
Life’s winnings bet and lost.
Too open to possibility,
Too closed to danger.
No coward’s death for her;
Have it all or none.
Living at the water’s edge,
Absolute beachfront.
– by David Bridge
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exposed
i roll up my sleeping bag
and move further
up the beach
but
moving only solves the problem
short term
tidal erosion
has exposed the truth
time has run out
the tide of traditional thinking
stubbornly cling
to building sea walls
– by John Heritage
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Cartwheel
A cartwheel by a girl into humanity
It’s the tilt, the angle, the sharp line in-between
A frisson in the shadows blurring underneath
We’ve survived crawling out from the ocean floor
We’ve thrived as we’ve grown and now we’ve matured
We’ve sliced up the land like it’s ours to own
And yet from the land we’re drawn back to the sea
It’s the sounds from afar… of a memory
And the scent in the air, the deep oceans tongue
We feel it on our pores, we feel it soaking in
It pulls us like the moon pulls the tide from the sea
We mistakenly think we’re here forever
And yes! In a way, in a cellular form
There’ll always be remnants, reminders of us
And scars and holes of death and poison
But the sea is calling, drawing us back
By the choices we’ve made, our own destruction
For thousands of years at one with the land
Until recently an explosion of man
Unaware of the knife edge of her life by the sea
But maybe she’ll discover a future for us
A cartwheel by a girl into humanity
– by Deb Lucas
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Through the Blur
The horizon wavers, a smeared line between sea and sky, as if the world itself has grown drunk on the evening air. Two children, small and swift, dart along the shoreline. Their bare feet slap against wet sand, their voices—sharp and bright—pierce through the salt-soaked wind. Cold water bites at their ankles, but they don’t flinch. Instead, they charge forward, laughing in defiance of the chill, in defiance of everything.
A figure lingers in the distance, heavy with stillness. One hand grips the neck of a bottle, the other hangs loose, fingers curling as though to grasp something unseen. The adult sways slightly, caught in a private storm, a tempest of rage and regret brewed stronger by every sip. The world tilts, spinning on an axis that feels too sharp, too off-kilter, and every movement—of the children, the waves, even the air—seems warped, unreal.
But the children don’t notice. Their joy is blinding, unbroken by the fractured lens of the watcher’s gaze. They splash through icy waves, sending ripples into a world too tired to respond. And for a moment, even through the blur, their laughter cuts through. It’s a fragile thing, but it clings—offering a fleeting warmth to someone too cold to hold it.
– by Steve Gray
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Distracted
That grey day
empty of seagulls
and sea-shells
I walked away
from you.
It was
the first time
I understood
that shadows
were just
darker shades
of themselves
and not black
as I had been
painting them.
If only
I had
turned back
little brother
…if only
© Jan Price
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The Line
“I’d always wondered when that line cut out.
The ‘horizon line’ where the sky and the sea pressed together in a rigid embrace, just a slash in the distance where water seemingly ended and sky seemingly began.
Colours would change, days when the sky blue was a close match for the water in the grayish blue morning, days when the sky was a riotous mix of golds and reds and vivacious purples, days when dawn appears to hover in hazy buttery yellows and golds and blushing pinks. Days when the sun glanced off the roiling waves and lit up the sea in spectacular shades of jade and emerald and turquoise. Days when the sea simmered a cool dark blue. Days when the crashing, turbulent waves were more froth than water, churning masses of white foam.
But no matter what, that line stayed the same- silent, stoic, rigid.
No matter how furiously Poseidon raged, the waves thrashing and writhing and leaping, the line remained still.
No matter how far or from what angle I peered at it, eager to find a break in its solidity, it stayed unbroken.
In time my childish whims about trying to find a break in the line began to wane, yet still, like a storm about to break over tranquil waters, my curiosity simmered beneath the surface, thirsting to be let free.
Thirsting for knowledge. To know how far out I could venture until I could find this line, this border at the end of the world, the border that separated us from the god’s domain.
I knew, however, deep down in my heart, that I would never find it.
But it became my inspiration. My drive.
And that is why I want to be a sailor.”
I bowed, and the room burst into applause.
– by Dulara J.
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Goodbye?
She walks the sandy shore that carpets the coastline.
Alone with her thoughts, she ruminates over the wording of a goodbye letter that she is sure she will write this time.
She needs to handle the expression like an egg; delicate in an effort not to break his spirit.
She lets each weighty word nap on her tongue before whispering to the wind for a sign of acceptance or rejection.
Her meditative state is momentarily broken by a girl and her younger brother skipping in the shallows – she performing cartwheels with the ease of youth.
I could do that once, she reflected. Where did it all get so complicated?
Children care not for such deep excogitations and pay her no attention.
On she walks to the seemingly impossible decision of not what to write, but ultimately who to write it to.
You see, her heart juggles two lovers but her head only one.
– by Adam Stone
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The limits of infinity
Anticipating his impending death, the great physicist Sir Isaac Newton reportedly said: “I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Three hundred years later, we spend our free time going from one entertainment to another; indulging our individual whims, pleasures and addictions. Yet, if we look up, we will see great issues needing our attention. Digital dictatorships; obscene wealth and power held by a concentrated few; rising seas; a geometric progression of plastic waste; uncontrollable fires ravaging cities and forest; fever-pitch nationalism bent on annihilation and expansion; over twenty million refugees corralled in prison camps; disinformation and hostile governments undermining democracy; mad men set on colonising Mars, everyone else collateral damage; the prevalent conviction that ‘politics’ is either futile or risky, failing to see that inaction is itself political – these are all part of the current state of play, the ocean of truth we ignore at our peril. Many of us toil to offset our own footprint, while irresponsible big business lays waste to the world.
Are our technologies, treaties, desultory recycling and conservation arresting this decline?
Has Earth passed its wilt-point?
Do we have the will to go on?
Can we move from thinking that ‘I am powerless, I can do nothing more’, to ‘I can do more’, on to ‘I must do more’ and ‘I am driving change!’?
Who will fight the rising tide with me?
Maybe, just maybe, striving together, staying hopeful, we will find the pathway to sanity, integrity, respect and accountability to all existence.
– by Daphne Delores Winter
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Last Time at the Beach
One may imagine a post-nuclear world
Where populations are now decimated
Empty streets, the fortunate in bunkers
A Northern hemisphere all just echoes
As are continents south of the equator
Except perhaps for the few tiny islands
With natives and tourists now perished
But just two children remain, somehow
A mystery and none now left to explain
Parents gone, but the warm beach calls
Running and playing, almost oblivious
Yet their realisation will also come soon
But for now, it is fun in the lapping tide
Skipping and laughing, kicking the sand
Almost as an escape from strange times
An odd sunset like there’s no tomorrow
– by Howard Osborne
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The Beach
Our children played along the shore,
they searched the tidal wrack,
we taught them wisdom of the sea
to take, but then give back.
We built our home from drifted wood,
there high above the beach.
And so we raised our family
beyond the ocean’s reach.
That wisdom of the ocean wide
We carved above our door –
‘You may take, but then give back’,
our household’s careful lore.
That ocean’s bounty nurtured us,
we cast our nets full wide,
we dragged our catch up to the shore,
beyond the hungering tide.
Then strangers came among our midst.
They walked our bounteous beach,
they spoke to lay their vision down,
“There’s plenty here for each!”
“We’ll float a fleet of longboats here,
a factory here as well.
We’ll share our daily catch with you,”
This much we heard them tell.
Within the plundering years the sea
had given up her all.
rusted factory, broken boats,
and rotten stinking pall.
From then our nets did nothing bring,
each tide a gruel of sand.
The children gone and wildlife too,
And gone the life we planned.
A morning came when we awoke
to face a plundered sea,
an emptiness before our gaze
of our temerity.
We joined our hands as lovers do,
set out beyond the shore,
stumbled through the seabed’s wrack
to face the sight we saw.
When we forgot what wisdom wrote
above our family door.
We took the bounty of the sea
but gave back nevermore.
– by John Margetts
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Survivors
It was floating…
…down my hallway
I tell a stranger at the relief centre
One of a handful of objects I’d managed to retrieve before the SES evacuated me
Beach
Just one word, emblazoned on the photo album cover, already starting to buckle
It used to sit on the coffee table
You’re lucky, she says, watching on as I open the album, assessing the damage
Yes, I agree as she tells me she lost everything
I remove photos
lay them on tea-towels
dab carefully
My children, decades ago, frolicking at the water’s edge
Their personalities captured –
Ben: tentative and cautious
Gemma: carefree and exuberant
I remember our first ‘just the three of us’ holiday
I hid behind sunglasses, beach hat and camera
Saltwater beneath my feet and streaking my face
Mum, I can see a fish, says Ben
Can not! says Gemma
Lightly I trace a finger around their images
Splop! I blot a salty tear
– by Jenny Hurley
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Beach
The old woman stopped sifting through the piles of photographs, took one in hand and looked at one intently. She might have been holding a small bird.
‘What is it?’ her younger companion asked.
‘Oh,’ the old lady sighed, ‘it’s just a picture of me at the beach. My mother, your grandmother took it. I’d forgotten I still had it. I’ve always loved it.’
The younger woman nestled beside her mother. Together they stared at the old photograph.
‘It’s not a good effort,’ the old lady said at last, her voice softening. ‘I mean look at that horizon.’ The two of them chuckled. ‘Mum never did learn how to use the old box brownie that dad bought her that Christmas.’
In the photo two children frolicked in the shallows. The elder of the two was a girl, running.
‘Who’s the boy?’
The old lady shrugged.
‘Where was it taken?’ the woman asked.
‘Oh,’ the old woman said airily, not taking her eyes off the photo, ‘somewhere.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘Can you imagine me that young?’
The daughter squeezed her mother’s arm.
‘Time,’ the old lady sighed. ‘She’s a cruel mistress and that photo is a kind of metaphor for life.’
The woman took the photo and stared at it. ‘A metaphor?’
‘Of course, the old lady said. ‘Look at me, running towards the future. I couldn’t wait to grow up.’
‘Aren’t you reading too much into a simple photo?’ her daughter asked.
The old woman sighed. Again. ‘I don’t think so. Maybe mum knew what she was seeing all along. I was never that young again. I was always running, searching.’
‘It’s just a photo.’
The old lady stroked her daughter’s face, smiling her sad smile. ‘As you say, dear.’
– by Geoff Gaskill
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Two kid family
– by Tony B.
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