the inky smell of fresh newsprint. I had recently
enjoyed reading You and Me: Confessions of a
Comma Queen, a memoir by Mary Norris, a
long-time copy editor at The New Yorker
magazine, whom I’d met at a Sydney bookshop.
The carefully pencilled comma made me smile
and think of Mary.
Redundant drawers, with or without their type,
often turn up these days in antique and junk
shops. This one had a modest simplicity that
spoke of its former owner’s precise nature, and
though I had no use for a lone drawer I couldn’t
put it down. Perhaps I could keep jewellery in it, I
rationalised. In the end I bought it for $25 and
paid a dollar for a souvenir teaspoon decorated
with koalas and the word ‘Australia’.
Back at my holiday house, I had the urge to
fill the compartments. While I love the idea of
empty spaces in decorating and design, they
never last long in my life. Three of my feathers
fitted perfectly into the 5cm by 3cm slots.
Late that afternoon I joined the last of the
surfers and dog walkers on the beach and
walked the two-kilometre stretch of sand with my
head down. I’ve always collected shells but now I
was looking only for tiny ones. Suddenly the
tangle of seaweed along the tideline turned into
a treasure trove. I picked up a dozen kinds of
shell, clusters of pink barnacles, cuttlefish bones,
sea urchin spines, lumps of coral and pumice,
smooth sticks of driftwood, fine ferny weeds and
strands of green baubles, a bluebottle without
stingers. Further up the beach, near the dunes,
were knobbly seedpods and leaves from
banksias and other trees.
How wonderful to be reminded of the vast
variety of life in our ocean. Although I have
snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef and around
the world, I hadn’t given much thought to what
(except sharks) might lie beneath my feet when I
swam at home. As I filled my hands and stuffed
my pockets, I wondered if I should be removing
anything from the beach at all. But I did not take