Zoe Archer World Nomad Journal

AUSTRALIA | Thursday, 4 July 2013 | Views [745] | View Smaller Image

As I gaze out along the entire surface of the sea where the waves crash in on the shore, countless plastic bottles, cans and other trash create a black sludge-like body of debris that churns and toils in the chaos caused by a large storm.

Tags: australia, beaches, coast, environment, environmental degradation, ocean, pollution, sea, sydney, zoe archer

A Silver Gull fruitlessly paces the shoreline in search of something edible, finding nothing but cigarette butts, weathered segments of Styrofoam packaging and whatever other plastic and processed remnants of garbage are flushed out of the storm water drains into the sea. Each piece of which it first tastes before determining, hopefully, that it will not be able to and should not attempt to digest. I fear greatly for those organisms who are unable to differentiate between what should and should not be eaten, or those whose hunger has precedence over their decision making.

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I am often bewildered by the things that can be found having been flushed out of the drains from the gutters of streets surrounding. In a troubling way their assortment can sometimes create a colourful, abstract sight of which is, perhaps, part of the reason we subconsciously turn our heads to the concern at hand. I barely turn an eye towards the fragments of glass that have been weathered by the sea for so long that they, as the waste seen here, eventually become a part of the natural landscape. In the near future will our children be building castles of sand or of our generation’s garbage?

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Zoe Archer World Nomad Journal

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