Beaches in Australia are signified with meaning. â The beachâ is a cultural centrepiece that contributes to the expectation of pleasure seeking in various forms, be it whilst being at the beach or reminiscing about being there. However, many of these pleasures are invariably risky. This thesis explored the cultural underpinnings of beach going in Australia, to reveal the existence of risk-taking norms in Australian beach use. Attention has been paid to the sociality of the embodied subject in the beach space, and how various cultural forces that promote risky beach behaviours have emerged in Australia. I present a psychosocial, ethnographic study that captures the patterns of behaviour and perceptions that reproduce norms of risk-taking that are specific to beach going. A synthesis of psychoanalytic geographies and psychodynamics provided a practical way of analysing such risky behaviours. These analytic methods were brought in touch with the more commonplace research methods of surveying and interviewing in human geography. This filled a methodological gap in the analysis of risk-taking behaviour as a phenomenon, and the associated psychic development of individuals within the specific context of beach going. This thesis has identified that people who use the Australian beach accept risky behaviours both knowingly and subconsciously. Acceptance of risk-taking as normal was observed among Australian born beachgoers who tended to possess an encultured perception of risky behaviour as specific to beach use. This perception is borne out of years of hazard encounters and risk-taking experience in an Australian beach setting. Unwitting engagements with risk-taking was more commonly observed in (overseas) tourist behaviour. Psychological affects associated with landscape and a relaxation of barriers normally preventing psychic satisfaction combine in the beachscape. Other socio-cultural and intrapersonal influences, such as interactive risk and specific personality traits, serve to amplify the acceptance, and increase the performance, of risky beach behaviours. Combined with the appeal of beach going, this makes risk-taking a common and hazardous practice at Australian beaches. In a space that contains a multitude of hazards, where social and cultural acceptance is attained through risk-taking, the beach going experience in Australia presents a hazardous undertaking, regardless of the beachgoerâ s background.