Sun, sand and headphones: new show extols ocean's healing power

In the pre-dawn half-light, people sit in chairs and on picnic blankets on the sand of Dixon Park beach in the coastal city of Newcastle.

Wearing headphones and gazing at the ocean, they are there for Sea Stories, an immersive aural work created by Melbourne theatre-maker Roslyn Oades for Newcastle's New Annual festival.

Each morning during the week-long festival, this communal listening experience unfolds as the sun slowly rises above the horizon.

"Everyone is watching the ocean … listening to this score that's designed to synchronise with the stages of sunrise," Oades tells ABC Arts.

A meditative blend of music, sound and storytelling, Sea Stories features the voices of a diverse selection of people — among them a retired coal miner, an Afghan refugee and a Paralympian — who share a love of the water.

"All the stories are about transformative experiences with the ocean," Oades says.

"It's a love-letter to the power of water, which people in Newcastle know a lot about."

Watching the coast wake up

The first iteration of Sea Stories appeared at Festival 2018 during the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast.

Creating that work was a revelation for Oades, a self-described night owl who was surprised by the scene she encountered when she rose early to witness the beach come to life.

"It's so busy at that time," she says. "There were surfers pre-dawn and then the people with rowboats come out and the lifeguards are there and people are walking.

"It's like watching the East Coast wake up."

When New Annual director Tory Loudon invited Oades to make a Newcastle version of the work, she jumped at the chance.

"It's so wonderful as an artist to be able to revisit and refine a concept," Oades says.

Conscious of not being a local, Oades recruited associate artist Janie Gibson, a Novocastrian theatre-maker whose work Meet Me at the Baths appeared at the 2025 New Annual festival, to work on the project.

The pair had previously worked together, when Gibson performed in a 2008 production of Stories of Love and Hate, Oades's work about the Cronulla riots.

Oades entrusted Gibson with the crucial task of finding the right people to speak to and conducting the interviews, which Oades describes as a "very targeted" process.

She also partnered with sound designers Michael Toisuta and Bob Scott, the latter working with Oades on several audio projects over the years, including The Nightline, which had a recent run at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre, and The Enormous Radio, set to premiere at the 2026 Melbourne Fringe.

Local musician Christopher Sutherland, who performs as Abhaya Sky, provided the title music. 

Oades emphasises the collaborative nature of her work.

"I really believe there's no such thing as a genius in the arts," she says.

"It takes a village to make a work, no matter what the marketing tells you. It's very much a team effort."

Stories of resilience

Sea Stories features the firsthand accounts of six people demonstrating, in different ways, the transformative power of water.

Two years after her leg was amputated following a fall from a fifth-storey balcony, Monique Murphy won a silver medal swimming for Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.

"Swimming helped her find herself again," Oades says.

The first time Afghan refugee Arwin Arwin saw the ocean, he was boarding a boat to come to Australia.

"He couldn't even swim or have a life jacket. He had to tie himself to a mast," Oades says. "Now he sits on the coast and looks back at the ocean."

Coal miner Joe Clayton started ocean swim club Newcastle Sandrays seven years ago.

"His story is about the power of community — you just keep turning up," Oades says. "He created this whole beautiful swimming group."

The work opens with Jeanette Lacey, a palliative care nurse at John Hunter Hospital who found herself struggling in her role.

Worn down by the hospital system and considering a career change, she made an appointment to see a psychologist.

While she waited for the appointment, she cast around for other potential strategies to improve her mental health.

She landed on ocean swimming, setting herself a challenge to swim in the ocean every day for a month.

It was no small undertaking for Lacey, who had always feared the water.

But much to her surprise, she soon conquered her fear. "She became completely addicted," Oades says.

By the time the scheduled appointment came around, Lacey found she didn't need it.

"The ocean had helped her reset," Oades says.

"She actually loves working with dying people. She's really good at it. It's just the hospital system was really hard.

"But because she can now swim every morning, she's able to carry on with that work rather than quitting."

Healing from grief

The work also features the story of Ken Lambert, whose wife, former ABC presenter Jill Emberson, died from ovarian cancer in 2019.

"His story is one of healing," Oades says.

In the wake of Emberson's death, Lambert began going on what he called "grief runs" early in the morning.

"He'd run and then watch the sunrise and go home," Oades says.

One morning, his run took him to the Bogey Hole, an ocean bath built by convicts in 1819. Struck by the beautiful dawn scene before him, he dived into the water.

It was a restorative experience, and the Bogey Hole soon became a regular stop on his running route.

"He gradually started putting his life back together," Oades says.

"He joined a ukulele group and then he invited all those people to come to the Bogey Hole, too."

The group soon created a set of quasi-religious rituals to accompany their visits to the scenic swimming spot, making small offerings to the ocean and initiating new members in an irreverent ceremony involving silver hotpants and a swim.

"[His life] could never be the same without his love of Jill but he's found this other loving community," Oades says.

In the final story, Awabakal man Peter Gillam reflects on the paintings of Joseph Lycett, a convict artist who was jailed for forgery in Newcastle in 1815.

Lycett's paintings of the local Awabakal people were some of the first by a European artist depicting traditional Indigenous cultural practices.

"[Gillam] talks about them as being like a family album … putting back the missing pieces of the story of the Awabakal people," Oades says.

"He is also working with Elders to … revive language and he shares some beautiful words in Awabakal about the ocean.

"It's such a special Newcastle story to have woven in there."

Sea Stories is at New Annual from September 25 to October 2.