I’d managed only a couple hours of sleep, having indulged in a long and fairly alcohol-sodden dinner the night before. But I knew I’d rue it if I missed the sunrise, whatever it brought.

I remember the pink-orange hues over Turimetta Beach the morning of the US elections, and how I’d felt full of hope that by day’s end, we would have welcomed in a new president, one intellectual, considered, and capable. This early morning this side of my world now, as the very antithesis of a president swore in, I drove out to Mona Vale beach in the dark, to take solace from the fact that the sun still rises in the east.