The Dark under the Skin and Australian landscapes

There are two quintessential Australian landscapes: the beach and the outback.  White Australians traditionally cling to the slivers of coast while Aborigines, though at home in both, have been pushed inexorably inland since white settlement.  “The Dark under the Skin” is about the reconciliation between European and indigenous Australians through their landscapes.  It was written at a time when there seemed to more hope that this was possible.  The Australia in the story is set in an imagined future where the whites live in tiny isolated beaches rimmed by cliffs, spending their days beach-combing and fishing.  Though there is no physical barrier to the rest of Australia where the black Australians live, there is a spiritual barrier.  Jordan and Mundaway finally breach that barrier.
  
One of my loves since I was a boy was body-surfing.  I hope this come through in the story and its climax.  A world saved by body-surfing – now there’s a thought!  The genesis of this story, as in many of my stories, was in a single image: the layer of dark skin hidden under the white, waiting to be revealed as the pale skin peels away in the harsh Australian sun.