My introduction to the ocean was not a smooth one. At age 11, while visiting a friend down Victoria’s Surf Coast, I was invited to the beach to go boogie boarding. Despite not being able to swim, I paddled out to the tiny waves. I found myself in deep water, unable to get back to the shore, and panicked. For whatever reason, I wanted more.

Being the son of an Israeli mother and Australian father, I had grown up in a cultural mess, a mix of hummus and bacon and eggs. My mother’s Jewish heritage wasn’t passed down and there was little reverence for Anglo-Christian traditions in our hippie family. Of course, I liked Christmas and getting presents, but it was always celebrated with hesitancy.

Growing up in the country, I felt at odds with my backwards authoritarian school. Socially, in terms of my peers, I moved with ease. Having light hair, light eyes, and athletic ability were my currency in a system that valued physical prowess above all else. In this environment my Jewishness, whatever it was, lay dormant and I developed my inner world in private to keep myself intact.

I looked at the other kids’ white-bread, cheese-singles, and ham sandwiches with envy as I ate my rye bread, stuffed with more unusual fillings. I wanted to live in a neat brick-veneer suburban house, not a mudbrick one.

Swimming classes were approached with dread: the smell, the surreal sounds, having to lie on my back, a tiny rubber board the only thing keeping me from a chlorinated death. Eventually I skipped these classes altogether. This didn’t go down well with the teachers. It was considered sacrilegious and meant cultural ostracisation ...