Overwhelmingly, the Great Ocean Road along the Southeastern coast of Australia, seems to me to be a demonstration of power. And not just the views. The road was built on the depression era, ostensibly to bring in tourist trade, and boost morale, but also to provide work for ex soldiers. Returned in one piece from the Great War, but only technically, soldiers struggled to find work and to find understanding. How could they begin to explain to their loved obrs, so far from them physically at the time of the fighting and now so far from them emotionally, all that they had seen and, worse, done. How could they grieve for the friends they lost among families wishing for nothing more than to rejoice that they had returned safely? After years of tension, of nerves and emotions being whittled and hardened, constantly facing death, there purely for the purpose of bringing about more of it, they were empty handed and at a loose end. What the creation of the Great Ocean Road provided, was comradery, the company of those who understood, just the right amount of danger (they were cutting a path right put of the side of the cliffs), and a sense of achievement. All that power, all those men, who had been part of an army, who had been front line players in a Great and terrible war, ploughed into the formation of a Great Road. All that power, all that restless energy and all that heartache. The men constructed a special gateway on the road, surplus to their original instructions, and dedicated it to their fallen comrades.
I found, as we made our way, partly by vehicle, partly on foot, along it with our guide, that the story of the creation of the Great Ocean Road was as beautiful as the scenery it was built to display.
But both the building of the road and the views we see from it, have a very specific, a terrible sort of beauty. We gaze out at the free standing rock formations known as 'the Twelve Apostles.' The sun on the water, the rough, calloused marbling of the rock itself, and the crashing of the waves into tiny diamonds of white spray at the foot of it, was amazing. But there are only nine of the apostles now left standing, and those that remain will be gradually destroyed by those diamonds of foam, and by the wind which whistles and gusts around us to create the crashing motion of the sizeable waves which break into them. We stand at the edge of the 'wash basin', a circular inlet of rock caused, as are all these spectacles by the erosion which also jeapardises them. And what we are watching is exactly that process of gradual erosion and natural destruction. The shape of the rock, carved out by the sea, now funnels the waves in and whips them into a ferocious frenzy, sending spray higher than our heads as we stand on rocks which are already towering about the broiling surface. And it does. It takes my breath away. Quite literally. It is nature at its most deadly and it's most beautiful. Rather like, I imagine, the aftermath of the war which provided the road's beautiful, broken workforce, is human nature, at its most beautiful and deadly.
Looking at the views, walking around the particular points of special note, all of which are characterised by that same sense of beauty both forged by and threatened by violence, I wonder how much its beauty is related to its power. When I catch my breath is it purely the aesthetic picture of the scene I am viewing? Would I catch my breath in the same way, if it were a still image? Is it the vista or is it the sheer force, the danger and the power of it which makes me gasp? Am I just a casual consumer of this scenery, or am I experiencing some sort of a visceral response, an understanding of my status in this world, being so small, so fragile. Am I paying homage to a force which I remain at the mercy of?
When we look at powerful currents, huge waves, jagged and sudden cliff faces, is there an element of us which is standing, deliberately and gazing at what would, if we only took a step or two closer, be death?
And I wonder whether those soldiers, brought home suddenly to fireside hearths and talk of little Johnny's recent triumph over his times tables, might perhaps have found solace in carving out a cliff face, hundreds of feet above those waves.
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