The Gritty Urban: the Australian beach as city periphery in cinema

The Australian beach is an iconic landscape both locally and internationally. It functions as an obvious landmark for the tourism industry, but also as an everyday location for the Australians who live along coastal regions. As a population, Australians tend to hug the coastlines, with most capital cities positioned on or near coastal areas (with the exception of landlocked Canberra of the Australian Capital Territory). Thus, the beach landscape is one that is incredibly familiar to the majority of the population and a big attraction for many international visitors to the island continent. Of course, Australia is not alone in having beaches and while many aspects of the beach and what it has come to represent in people’s lives are universal, there are still very distinct and specific elements to Australian beaches and to the ways these have been creatively expressed through cinema.