Damien Cole giving the finger to oil drilling company Equinor.

There is a humming on the water, a low buzz that sounds like bees. The thumping of boards begins to sound out like a drum across the ocean, and tens of hands begin to splash, picking it up in handfuls and throwing salty water skyward. It feels like a storm, or falling rain. I'm grinning.

The collection of boards on the beach are fabulous enough in themselves - it's like a history lesson of surfing on this coast, with everything from locally shaped 1970's single fins to more modern boards, to beaten old things spray painted with political protest. It's special. It's bigger than us, but at the same time it IS us - we are a hive, working together to protect earth honey.

This is what people can do when we care enough.

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Last Sunday I joined a few hundred people on the Torquay foreshore for a paddle out to protest against oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight by Norwegian company Equinor. The chanting of 'No Way Equinor' filled the ocean - there were little kids and dogs on the front of mals and paddleboards, old men and young woman, friends and families. I saw people I grew up with on this coast I hadn't seen in years. The whole thing was run by Damien Cole, son of local shaper and surf legend Maurice Cole, the local independent candidate. You can see part of his plea here - everyone was in admiration of his passion and spirit on the day.

On Tuesday, Equinor released it's draft environment plan for an exploration off the South Australian coast. Whilst the company claims it can be done safely, the real cost could be catastrophic. If there is an oil spill - and remember it only takes one - all of southern Australia's coast, from Western Australia, through SA and Victoria, Bass Strait and north to NSW - could be affected, as the below image shows.

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The 'oil spills are incredibly rare' argument sits very uncomfortably with me. Nuclear disasters are rare too, but look what happened at Chernobyl and Fukishima. The risk is far too risky to contemplate. I don't think the benefits outweigh the risks, particularly in an age where we should be focussing on renewable resources such as solar and wind, rather than relying on old technologies.

At the moment there are no heavy industries along that coast. The waters are currently pristine, rare for the Earth at all. Marine conservation biologist Rick Steiner writes:

A worst-case oil spill in the Bight would cause extensive lethal and sublethal impacts to hundreds of marine species, dozens of marine reserves, and many coastal wetlands. Such a spill could result in the mortality of hundreds of thousands of birds; thousands of marine mammals, potentially including endangered southern right whales, blue whales, killer whales, dolphins, endemic Australian sea lions, New Zealand fur seals; and hundreds of sea turtles. Pelagic eggs and larvae of valuable fish populations, such as sardine and anchovy, could be severely impacted. Hundreds of kilometres of shoreline could be oiled, causing extensive harm to intertidal and subtidal communities, including the productive nearshore kelp ecosystems of the Great Southern Reef. Ecological injury could persist for decades (as from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska).

Even reading about it makes me feel quite ill. We know how industry can misrepresent itself for the sake of money, and we know how devastating an oil spill can be.

That's why we gathered on the beach at Torquay. This coast just means to much to us, and our children, to the whales, the dolphins, the orcas, and all the sea life that calls this place home. Including me.

Read more about it here - ethical company Patagonia is leading the way. And this video from Greenpeace sums it up here. You can donate to the Great Australian Bight Alliance here and most importantly, please, PLEASE PLEASE, add YOUR voice HERE.