Australian beachspace: the plurality of an iconic site

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2016

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Ellison, E.
Hawkes, L.

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Borderlands E-Journal: new spaces in the humanities, 2016; 15(1):1-20

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The Australian beach is frequently positioned as an integral component of international tourist campaigns as well as the featured exotic location of exported television shows such as Home and Away (1988--) and Bondi Rescue (2006--). The idea of 'one' iconic beach that fits and covers all desires is promoted by these representative monolithic images. The beach has come to stand in for the desirability of Australia at large. Kathryn James goes as far as to suggest that the Australian beach and coast have 'displaced the Outback or the bush as a stock image or theme' (James 2000, p. 12). However, this stock image often neglects the diversity and multiplicity of the beach as a site. There are many different beaches in Australia and even on the one beach there is a combination of different spaces. This article addresses the plurality of the beach and drawing on Soja's concept of Thirdspace (1996) and Doreen Massey's 'simultaneity of stories so far' (2005, p. 5) puts forward the term beachspace to account for this complex, dynamic, changing and plural site.

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Copyright 2016 Borderlands. This journal provides immediate open access to its content under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions and all users are free to share the work (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), if the contribution is properly attributed and used for non-commercial purposes. The material published in the journal may not be altered or built upon. All authors who wish to publish in Borderlands must agree to the licensing terms stated above. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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