WAVES OF INFLUENCE
In 1943, UK Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”.
It’s often quoted as a comment on the power of architecture to influence our lives and behaviour.
Unless you are a particularly crazed coastal engineer or developer, most of us don’t shape our coastlines, but I think it’s fair to say that our coastlines shape us. Time in the water physically shapes us—everything from our musculature from paddling, sun tans, bleached hair, bony growths in our ear canals from cold water, pterygia growing over our eyes from sun exposure, skin cancers – the list goes on.
But does it shape us in less obvious ways: our behaviours and surfing styles? Some claim, for example, that Sydney’s coastline of small coves and bays divided by headlands has shaped its tribal surfing culture and tribal boardriders club scene, where surfers identify strongly with a single beach.
Many years ago, I travelled to the northern Chilean coastal town of Iquique, where young bodyboarders thoroughly dominated the numerous sea-urchin-encrusted reefs. The common theory was that the waves were too dangerous and shallow for beginner stand-up surfers,
