Early April, Mission Beach

Alone on the beach the curlews follow in each receding wave, rattling down the smooth incline of glistening sand, spooning the soft slope with long, tube-like bills, grey and brown and white, as the sand is grey and brown and white. The gulls, sleepy and fat, yet watching the curlews fish with a certain belligerance, huddle together, colony-wise, higher up where the dry sand is white as salt. Their heads turn, and the wind tufts their feathers, and they hug the sun-warmed, wind-smoothed sand. Seaweed tumbles in with the surf, the whole brown writhing mass of it turning over with each oncoming and retreating wave. And settling again, slick tentacles lashing a scruff of foam into the mesh of bulbs and leaves. Single foliate strands stream fluidly in a hole of clear water, where tiny shells, perfect as gems in a store window, roll slowly down the sides of slanting submarine slopes. There are separate masses of kelp bobbing bulbs up, between waves, like octopus, like segments of men, brown flesh, tatters of skin.

An old lady, living in her small, wind-bound house through the off-season, stares seaward across the beach, shading her eyes with a wrinkled hand. 'Is that a body out there?"