Dollymount to Sorrento

Danielle O’Leary

She grew up by the Irish Sea.

Dollymount Strand is a 5-kilometre beach that floats on its own island, North Bull Island. To get to that beach, she had to stroll 400 metres from her childhood home, crossing Clontarf Road, and walk across the Wooden Bridge that was built in 1819. A port is to the right, which opens out into Dublin Bay, the Irish Sea. The sun rises over this sea.

The moments in and around the sea punctuated her childhood. She slowly walked across that high, unsteady bridge with courage as her parents balanced her steps.

When she married, her husband said he wanted to move to Australia.

‘I’ll go if we live by the beach,’ she told him. He promised that they would.

In 1982, she first flew over Indian Ocean, en-route to Perth. They landed on July 4, and went to the beach the next day. The winter weather was perfect – a bright sunny day, 17 degrees. No one was around. Is this paradise, she thought?

She now lives by the Indian Ocean.

Sorrento Beach is a 600-metre beach that is shaped with man-made stone walls. To get to that beach, she strolls 280 metres from her home, crossing West Coast Drive and walks along a wooden deck that curves with the sand dunes. A harbour is to the right, which opens out into Marmion Marine Reserve, the Indian Ocean. The sun sets over this ocean.

He kept his promise. Their bedroom windowsill is decaying from the ocean salt in the air.

When she is struggling and needs energy, she goes to the beach. When she walks along the shoreline, she needs to touch a rock on the stone wall before she can turn around.

When she is happy and wants to celebrate, she goes to the beach. Sometimes with champagne, always with her husband.

She walks home, always breathing a little easier.

To stand on the beach – looking east in Dublin, looking west in Perth – she has a place.

She knows where she is. It makes her feel at home, no matter what country.

Author’s note

This piece was inspired by Monique Tippett, Karrakin Three featured in the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial 2021. Tippett’s Karrakin series explores the idea that ‘most living things have a place. A point of return and repose. To nest, cover and rest’ (Tippett, Indian Ocean Craft Triennial 2021, Curiosity and Rituals of the Everyday, exhibition catalogue). This piece is a creative response to Tippett’s notion of importance of a place for return and rest for migrants who have more than one home.

Danielle O’Leary is a senior lecturer at Curtin University. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Westerly and Meniscus. Like her mother, she loves the ocean.