Cape Paterson writer Rees Quilford has won the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction with an evocative essay recording daily swims at Cape Paterson’s Bay Beach through the first Covid winter. Rees is a PhD candidate with the non/fictionLab of the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Adrift in shallow waters outlines his experience of returning to Bass Coast, the place of his birth and childhood, after an extended period away. It documents his attempt to reacquaint myself with the place through a daily routine of swimming, walking and photographic documentation at a pivotal moment in human history. The judges described the work as “an elegiac, yet purposeful act of documentation and personal reflection, linking history, science, literature, and myth by well-chosen and referenced quotes. “It is a grounded portrait of place and chronicle of time. It weaves between the past and present of both the town and the writer in a reflective (yet never self-indulgent) manner, always coming back to the source, the ocean. Subjective and introspective but thoughtfully linked to the wider world, it offers perspective in an uncertain time.”
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