Sun and surf really does make us the lucky country The beach is a key reason to love summer - and it is what defines Australia. THERE are no states in Australia without coastline. The United States has many. If you spent your entire life in Colorado, Idaho, North or South Dakota, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia or Montana, you would never see the ocean, never hear the roar of the surf, never sniff the heady cocktail of salt and seaweed or be enchanted by the song of the seabirds. Even if an Australian never leaves his home state, he will be able to see an ocean. It may be the Pacific or the Indian. He may dip his toe in the Gulf of Carpentaria (if he's careful to avoid the saltie crocs, which eat grown men like grown men eat biscuits). He can plunge into the Great Australian Bight, which sounds exactly like what it appears to be: a chunk bitten out of the country by a monster large enough to chew continents but not large enough to eat a whole one. I grew up in Perth, where many beaches are not clearly defined, there's just a long ribbon of white sand pounded incessantly by waves. Where one beach ends and another begins is often a matter of opinion. But WA is a state blessed to watch the sun set, rather than rise, over the ocean. Ah, sunset at the Ocean Beach Hotel. My wife grew up in Sydney, where the beaches are higgledy-piggledy. If you want to get from Bondi to Manly, you need to catch 17 different forms of public transport. In Melbourne, you swim in the bay or, if you want waves, it's a fair hike. Pack a lunch. And probably dinner. But the beach is what defines Australia. We don't belong in the Outback. We aren't swaggies on a dusty track waltzing Matilda, we're beach bums waltzing an Esky. Now summer is here, we can revert to our natural state. There's something magical about diving back into the brine from whence our primordial ancestors crawled a gazillion years ago on their slimy, scaly bellies. We are creatures of the sea, it is our spiritual home. When I was a whippersnapper, we used to surf a lot and at one of our favourite beaches, a pod of dolphins would surf with us. They came in about the same time every day (11am). When you caught a wave, dark shadows would zip through the blue water in front of you and when the wave broke into a frothing white mess, the dolphins would flip out the back, maybe two metres into the air. It was wondrous to share the sea with our mammalian cousins who, scientists say, also share much of our DNA. They claim we may be more closely related to dolphins than was previously thought, although it is probably about 95 million years since we had a common ancestor. One of the dolphin's closest relatives is the cow, but have you ever seen a cow trying to surf? They're hopeless, honestly. There are many reasons to love summer - picnics, fruit, fresh tomatoes on the vine, the smell of the barbie. But mostly the beach. Forget Mother Earth, it's Mother Ocean. I was once in a tiny town in Wales and met an old bloke in the town's only pub who asked me if I was a traveller. I said yes, I was from Australia, and he told me he had never been more than 50 miles from his village. "What's the sea like?" he asked. I've seen it on the telly. How do you describe it to him? The colours, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the beauty and power? Turquoise rock pools, scuttling sea creatures, the constant hiss of waves like radio static. Sand between the toes. You have to be there. There are downsides to our glorious Australian beaches, of course. Me in a bathing suit is one. Move along, please, nothing to see here. Baz Blakeney is a Herald Sun columnist