Many things make me happy. My Portuguese water dog Wilbur, kids and husband a close second. I’m also happy consuming dark chocolate bullets, talking to strangers, schlepping around in my trackie dacks, weeding the garden and singing my lungs out in the car – usually Billy Joel, Adele and Kate Bush (badly).

Up there, too: escaping the routine of work and home life and taking to my happy place – the beach.

I love everything about it. Diving into the first wave and that sensation of the cold water catching my breath; the feel of the salt on my skin; the sound of the pounding waves. I love the constant movement of the tides and the unpredictability of the water, from flat and calm to choppy and treacherous, seemingly within minutes.

Culburra is Georgie Gardner’s favourite beach as it has everything: “simplicity, clear water, migrating whales and the time to think”.Credit: James Brickwood

I love that every day is unique and that you never quite know what’s in store or what’s below the surface. I love that the surf is intimidating and leaves me feeling small and insignificant.

I grew up in Perth in the 1970s, and the school holiday tradition was to “go down south”. We’d pack up the Ford Falcon station wagon, destination: my grandmother’s fibro cottage 250 kilometres away, in a little town called Dunsborough.

The journey was long and hot, sibling fights frequent, bare legs sticking to the vinyl seats. The five-hour trip was made more tolerable by the promise of a long holiday at the beach, which I realise now was the genesis of my lifelong love affair with the ocean. The grainy, square photos taken on my mother’s ever-reliable Kodak camera document a childhood well-lived.

Georgie Gardner says Culburra Beach has stolen her heart.Credit: James Brickwood

Many years later, in my early 20s, after choosing to make Sydney my home, when holidays beckoned it seemed obvious to “go down south”. In this era a second-hand Toyota Corolla was my vehicle, the seats not so sticky but the destinations as varied as they were beautiful – Gerringong, Vincentia, Bawley Point, Tathra, Narooma.

The beauty of the east coast is quite different to the west but united by the peppermint trees that co-exist with the eucalypts and wattle. The coastal towns offer up fish-and-chip shops, op shops and fishing tackle shops next to laundromats, video stores and Chinese restaurants – the type that serve sweet and sour chicken on Lazy Susans alongside Chiko Rolls. I’d get a taste of the town’s flavour by chatting outside pubs and post offices to locals going about their beachside life, the memories for this era captured on a Canon EOS 500.